ABSTRACT
The author considers the possibilities of art education as occupying hopeful spaces, and also the complicated intersections of privilege and oppression and their impact on education in the United States of America. The political and social climate in the USA in the second decade of the 21st century seems to be experiencing an increase in hostility toward underserved populations. Underservedness seeks to consider the conditions that prevent populations from succeeding in communities, as opposed to situating the population as underserved. The same social and economic factors that contribute to underservedness in communities have been linked to another crisis in the USA: the school-to-prison (or confinement) pipeline. These connections led the author to consider if, or how, as teacher educators we are working to best prepare future art educators to effectively teach some of our most vulnerable populations of students? Can those same methods serve to educate students becoming teachers on the impacts of mass incarceration in the United States of America? What role, if any, do the arts have in combatting the school-to-prison pipeline?
