School as Microcosm: Zimmerman in Our Midst

Hannah Cushing
Guest Columnist

The aftermath of the Zimmerman trial came at a time when I had just obtained a teaching position in an EBD (Emotional/Behavioral Disorders) program attended by students referred by local schools who no longer believe they can serve them. I have struggled with entering special education and becoming further entrenched in a system I believe treats separate as equal and determines outcomes by controlling access to quality education. Within the EBD label, I know it is statistically true that having students who are NOT black or a male of color will be an exception. I have come to understand this part of special education as the darkest corner of a system that assumes the worst about kids.

The darkest parts of the public school system and special education are a microcosm of the darkest parts of our society, and those in power are invested in maintaining a system to pass on existing societal values that allow them to maintain power. Consequently, the devalued in school get swept under our systemic rug and continue to get swept away by the broader society. The evidence for an alarming, symbiotic relationship between school and society is overwhelming.

Those among the discarded, fight (and often lose to) overwhelming odds. Students of color are over-represented in special education, especially for labels associated mostly with behavior. Black students are over-represented as having Mental Retardation (or Intellectual Disability) and among this label and all special education labels, black males are disproportionately represented. Furthermore, special education students are more likely to be incarcerated, drop out of school, and become unemployed adults.

Students are further impacted by “zero-tolerance” policies that limit administrators’ freedom to use judgment when reacting to behaviors. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul demonstrate racial disparities in discipline wherein black males are most impacted. It’s also a national problem. School punishment is a gateway to incarceration in the school to prison pipeline, and zero-tolerance policies mirror the protracted war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing that have resulted in a prison industrial complex.

During my first year teaching, my students taught me that kids in poverty know why we call it the “American Dream” not the “American Reality.” Economic growth is a generational process. My middle schoolers knew that the mythological paths out of poverty were blocked by systemic barriers.

Education is not a path out. Dropping out and working is not a path out. Crime is not a path out.  

The microcosm/macrocosm relationship between school and society is a less obtrusive Zimmerman. Rather than shooting kids on the street, we isolate them, label them, and teach them their identities as troubled youth, a bad reader, or “up to no good.”

The consequences are also less obtrusive and linear. Kids don’t die right away. Some get killed on the streets. Some stagnate in incarceration. Some are simply stifled from being what they could have been.

No matter what I do in my classroom, I cannot protect my students from all of the other odds stacked against them. They need your help.

Why should you care?  

As a human, you are a teacher. You participate in the construction of not only your identity but also the identities of those around you.

The way you interact with the most vulnerable, teaches them about their perceived value and place in our society. The way you direct your attention teaches who our society believes is worth worrying about. The manner in which you engage or disengage from conversations about privilege informs the trajectory of change.

You can be a spotlight or a closet.

While I understand that these symbiotic systems seem like monsters too large to kill, deciding you’re too small a factor to affect change is the wrong response.

Choose an issue or two—fight police brutality, for racial equity, read with kids, or search for the cause that punches you in the gut.

Say something. Write something. Do something.

Press on the boundaries of institutionalized inequality.

If you’re white, don’t get guilty. Get mad.

When you affect change that brings more peace in equity in small corners of society, you will also drive change in an education system tasked with transmitting culture to the next generation.