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Schools today are not training students to be good citizens: they are training students to be obedient.

I even read about a girl who ran a library of banned books out of her locker.

the football team got a bigger budget than the Library

@SchoolSecurityBlog, the issue is that in schools your constitutional rights are completely ignored. Random bag searches are not conducted with probable cause or a search warrant. If students spend the first part of their life in an environment where their rights are ignored, then they will not insist on them later in life. Someone might make the argument that since students are minors that they don't have rights. It is a weak argument. For one thing, I reached the age of majority while still in public school, and they still ignored my rights.

most of these so called "reasonable risk reduction measures" are not reasonable nor do they reduce risk. Cameras are entirely ineffective in preventing crime or violence. My school had a camera watching the vending machines, but a student still robbed them and was not even caught (he took the simple measure of obscuring his face). I acknowledge that there have been many court ruling that make what schools do legal. However, even with the "in loco parentis" policy in place, even my parents would not have a legal right to search my stuff without my permission when I turned 18 (which is how old I was my senior year). Yet the school could search my bag if they wanted to. Or my friends car (I am pretty sure he was also 18 when that happened, he was only a few months younger than I). That means that once a kid turns 18, the school system technically had more control over the kid than his parents do. Another problem that I have with in loco parentis is that the school really is not a students parent. A parent presumably has the child's best interests at heart, if they didn't it could be grounds for the state to take the child away from the parent. Unfortunately, school faculty members do not always have the student's best interests at heart. They should and often do, but many times some faculty members just like messing with people. It is an unfortunate fact, and one that I am sure many people would like to ignore, but the fact of the matter is that bullies are not confined to the student body. Also parents go to extraordinary measures for their children. They pay to keep them clothed and fed and cared for. They devote endless hours taking care of them. Therefore it makes sense that they should be granted extraordinary legal measures to take care of their children. To grant these same legal measures to an arbitrary school faculty member is really in insult to the hard and loving work of parents everywhere.

The schools of decades past seemed to get by without universal surveillance. Why is it all of the sudden essential today? Could many of these security measures be over reactions stemming from mass publicized incidents of school violence?

scores on the second test were notably better than on the first one, suggesting that students were responding to the need to do more work

while her dean authorized her removal from teaching the course, she said, he never once sat in on her course

she may include "too many facts" on her tests

the incident "raises serious questions about violations of pedagogical freedoms."

many other comments about the course standards were positive, with several students specifically praising Homberger's advice that they form study groups. One student wrote: “My biggest AHA‐reaction in this course is that I need to study for this course every night to make a good grade. I must also attend class, take good notes, and have study sessions with others. Usually a little studying can get me by but not with this class which is why it is my AHA‐reaction."

Taking “stack” just means keeping a list of people who wish to participate—offer a question or comment—during the Q & A. Rather than anxiously waving your hand around and wondering if you’ll be called on, if you would like to participate, signal to me in some way (a gesture, a dance move, a traditional hand-in-the-air, meaningful eye contact, etc.) and I will add you to the list. However, we’re not just going to take stack, we are going to take progressive stack in an effort to foreground voices that are typically silenced in dominant culture. According to Justine and Zoë, two self-identified transwomen who were active in the movement, progressive stack means that “if you self-identify as trans, queer, a person of color, female, or as a member of any marginalized group you’re given priority on the list of people who want to speak – the stack. The most oppressed get to speak first.” As I take stack, I will also do my best to bump marginalized voices and those who haven’t yet had a chance to participate to the top.

As with any tool that confronts the effects of privilege and power head-on, the Progressive Stack makes some people uncomfortable

In a complete social and historical vacuum, level-playing-field equality is an excellent proposition. But in the actual lived world of our history, experiences, and interactions the idea of treating everyone uniformly “regardless of gender” or without “seeing color” simply strengthens already-entrenched inequalities

As the increasing number of targeted online harassment campaigns has shown us, once a concept or issue has traveled through the right-wing Outrage-Distortion Complex, there is little hope of reclaiming rational discussion. It’s been permanently stained. One might dismiss the frothing lamentations of white-genocide-via-classroom-pedagogy that bubble up from a subreddit, but the insidious trope of “reverse racism” has put its thumb on the scale enough to have distorted the conversation around the Progressive Stack

because the Progressive Stack calls attention to existing structures of inequality by replacing them with another structure entirely, it forces those of us who identify as white (and, particularly, male) to confront the ways in which we have been complicit in maintaining inequality

When you’re accustomed to privilege, even the suggestion of equality will feel like oppression

google “progressive stack.” Almost every result you get will take you to the fever swamps of right-wing Reddit and warmed-over piles of gamergate droppings. The common denominator is that “Progressive Stack” is simply anti-white “racism” dressed in fancy intellectual clothes

Giving up power, it turns out, is hard for some people. Especially when that power has been historically-constructed to be so pervasive as to render it unquestioned and indeed unseen in its hegemonic sway. Pierre Bourdieu calls this symbolic power: “For symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it”

It means there will be times when people who are not accustomed to their identity being a source of discomfort and exclusion will have to learn–in a managed and intentional space–what that feels like.

there will be friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments, because any education worth the name involves friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments