Dialogue About Education and Violence

 For one of my education classes, I had to have a "dialogue" (not interview) with someone about education and violence. I talked with someone who went to the same high school as I did. His father was a police officer at our school. This assignment was important to me because it opened my eyes to a wide range of what "violence" actually is. One thing I need to stress is that violence is not just physical and verbal. It encompasses everything from racial stereotypes to security in schools. It looks like we end the conversation on a very somber note, but the conversation continued for a few minutes. My recording devices failed soon after the conversation, so I do not have the entire conversation.

Partial Transcript of the Dialogue

Me: How do you think the strength of monitoring us [in our high school] and keeping us under control with police offers and security cameras and things like that have affected our education, and do you think that if we…like now, they have to wear those stupid lanyards, and what if they started putting in metal detectors and scanning the kids with the metal things and all of that? How do you think that would affect us in school?

Friend: Well, there’s a point when it starts to become a little too much. There’s a point when it stops being school and starts becoming prison. And that’s not, you know, it’s bad, but it’s not a pandemic, but there is a point, one of the big reasons I left that school, by the way, was because of reasons like that. Where it starts to become less about school and more about the security. And then it starts becoming more about keeping a grasp on the students instead of about getting an education. And while I’m not saying that security of the students shouldn’t be a priority, education is what schools do first. Keeping us safe, it’s nice, and with the lanyards, I understand why they’re doing it. I don’t exactly condemn it, other than it’s kind of inconvenient.

Me: I don’t like it.

Friend: But it starts getting to a point where it’s literally like prison. And the students are constantly having to do fifty things before they can walk down the hall. And it’s like why?

Me: Yeah, and I feel like [our high school] had a very loose policy on that because they were able to keep ahold of us in other ways. Like, we didn’t get completely out of control, and there were enough security measures that we felt safe, but I felt we were free enough…especially when we were seniors. We could just walk down the hall in the middle of class and people wouldn’t really care that much, especially if they knew we weren’t bad students. And we weren’t completely harassed. We had the freedom to move around as we needed to, and I felt that was a big part of my learning and growing in school, that I had the freedom to do what I wanted, within the parameters of what my teachers allowed.

Friend: Well, it’s like, you’ve been here for three years, so you’re fine. Obviously you can make the argument that schools are getting less and less safe with the kids.

Me: You think? [honestly, not sarcasm]

Friend: So certain measures have to be taken.

Me: But do you think it’s a better use of resources to take those measures or to put in programs that stop unwanted behavior or reform them, or what?

Friend: Well, if you’re talking about reforming, you’re talking about a corrections facility, and that’s not what school is supposed to be.

Me: Or like ISS [in school suspension] programs or…

Friend: Okay, ISS is the closest we should probably ever go to corrections facilities. I like to call it corrections facilities for children because actual corrections facilities are harsh. ISS really kind of only gives that feeling of isolation again. And it’s an attempt to make you act better. Honestly, I see the point in it, but in the way that it’s taking right now, most of the students that go there are frequent visitors, and all they do in there is sit and talk. I’m sorry, but that kind of kills the point.

Me: We were talking a lot in class about suspensions, and one big argument against suspensions is that a lot of these kids go home, watch t.v. all day, hang out with their friends, maybe start getting into drugs, hanging out on the streets, and then they come back to school, and they’re behind on their work, and they don’t have that connection with the school anymore. They might feel they’d rather be at home right now than at school, so they might as well get in trouble and get sent home.

Friend: Well, that gets into the whole topic of how school is no longer important in society. I mean, back then, it was life or death, it was cutthroat to get into school. Now, there are so many people in school that people just think, “I just want to go home.”

Me: And it’s required to go for a certain amount of time.

Friend: I honestly don’t believe schools should have suspension policies.

Me: What do you think they should do instead?

Friend: Keep them in there.

Me: Even if it disrupts the learning of other students?

Friend: Oh no, no, no not in the classroom. In a separate environment. They just sit there. All day. Or as long as the teacher says. Because if they can’t do anything…

Me: …they’re not going to get in trouble.

Friend: They’re not going to do it again. Because they think it’s boring, so they won’t do it again.

Me: Yeah, can’t talk with anybody, can’t do anything.

Friend: Now that bridges into what’s humane and inhumane punishment. Quite honestly, there is no “humane” punishment.

Me: We talked about that a lot and about, actually this was in philosophy club. We talked about how there’s the whole “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and, I don’t want to get too heavy into this, but talking about the death penalty and why we shouldn’t be able to take away life if we can take away liberty by sending people to jail and how some people are plagued by anxiety that someone else killed a bunch of people and how they can’t pursue happiness if the killer is still alive. How we can’t just judge off these emotions.

Friend: What I’m about to say could be considered controversial. But it is my honest opinion of this. I am not against the death penalty. I am, however, for substitution of the death penalty. Remember how we were talking about the isolated space? I honestly believe that that works so much better. I’m also using a biblical standpoint of this. Because the bible doesn’t exactly mention anything about liberty, at least nothing that I can think of off the top of my head. However, what it does mention, quite clearly, “thou shalt not kill.” Like I said, I’m not against the death penalty, but I am for substitution of it. Biblically, the death penalty is immoral. But in order to ensure a safe society…

Me: It’s sometimes necessary.