Luke Orlando

Reference:
Morris W., Monique. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. The New Press, 2015. 

More than anything else, Pushout is concerned with truth. Morris presents the facts and narratives gathered through her research with no pretension. Her study is based on narratives from Black girls recalling their experience in the educational and (often) the carceral system. Using a line of narrative inquiry, she works to help relate the realities of Black girls as they reflect upon their lives, choices, and futures. Reading these stories exposes the reader to the struggles, fears, judgments, inequalities, and backgrounds of girls marginalized by an educational system plagued with excessively punitive and racially biased policies. The girls recall how dress codes, sexist or racially insensitive instructors, zero tolerance discipline, economic hardship, sexual abuse, and cultural expectations pushed them out of education, sometimes quite deliberately. There is specific attention drawn to the fact that most disciplinary measures are exclusive, meaning that they remove the student from the learning environment. I chose to read this book because of my experience teaching art at the Monroe County Correctional Facility, after which I realized I had a blind spot in my view as an educator. Going into the book, I expected to see stories coming from a perspective very different than my own, and I did, but I also saw a reflection of an educational system that I did not recognize. Many of the girls who gave their testimony in the study were former students of "dropout factories", schools with less than 60% graduation rates. As much as this book provided me with a better appreciation of the challenges Black girls face in schools, it also reminded me that my own view of what experience schools provide to all children is quite narrow, and I must continually push to broaden it.

​