ABSTRACT
Lockdown is becoming the pervasive reality for working-class youth in public schools that resemble prisons or military camps rather than sites for learning and critical thought. In these schools, replete with metal detectors, armed guards, and periodic searches, poor youth, especially African American and other youth of color, are being subjected to increasing levels of physical and psychological surveillance, confinement, and regimentation. The physical restrictions imposed within the school walls are complemented by national policies and practices in education, such as school uniforms, more stringent, standardized forms of rote education, and JROTC, which signify the need for discipline, obedience, and conformity. This growing culture of militarism is being created/cultivated predominantly within grossly underfunded, tax-based schools of color in poor communities. Since youth identities in these communities are discursively constructed as under-achieving, violent-prone, education-aversive youth (i.e., the dregs of society, who are in need of discipline and restraint), the imposition and presence of enforcement policies to “civilize their untamed spirits” seems merited and natural.
