51 pages • 1 hour read
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Learning on Lockdown”
Morris recalls her experiences interviewing Black girls who attended class in juvenile court schools. After describing the schools’ bleak atmosphere, she quotes two students named Portia and Mia who said attending class in detention is a depressing atmosphere that precludes learning. Chapter 4 then explores the realities of school in confinement for Black girls.
While they are often sidelined in social justice discussions of incarceration in America, 35% of girls who were committed to juvenile correctional facilities were Black (145). Considering that Black girls make up less than 14% of the population of American girls (145), the rate of incarceration for Black girls is hugely disproportionate to other races. Indeed, there is a long and tumultuous history in the United States of Black girls and women being committed to institutions that purported to reform them but only sought to strictly control their behavior and criminalize Black femininity. These institutions, such as asylums, reformatories, homes for women, and jails, were tools of oppression by denying Black females the same educations as their white peers.
Morris argues that this historical trend of segregated education can still be found in juvenile court schools. Several girls are quoted throughout the chapter describing what it is like to attend class in confinement. They describe the hyperpunitive nature of juvenile court schools, where teachers administer harsh discipline and can even call for girls to be punished with suspensions that are very similar to solitary confinement.
Chapter 4 emphasizes how juvenile court schools fail to keep Black girls interested and enrolled in school, thus fueling their pushout. The quality of education in juvenile court schools is severely lacking. In addition to poor teaching, the curricula are repetitive and ill-suited to the students. As one girl named Janice described to Morris, juvenile court classes were easy to the point where she was concerned that she would not be prepared for college. She also explained that girls are routinely kept in the dark about the number of credits they have earned while in confinement, and that she was never given a college counselor to help her plan for higher education. These facets of juvenile court schools all contribute to a cumulative atmosphere that kills Black girls’ academic motivation. Morris observes how all of these qualities ultimately contribute to the pushout phenomenon: “[T]he poor quality of instruction, combined with racial isolation, a punitive climate, and an inability to successfully match their district school credits with the credits they earned while in detention, has […] further pushed [girls] out of school” (154).
These confined settings are also detrimental to mental health. The hyperpunitive nature of juvenile court schools often exacerbates pre-existing mental health conditions and past traumas, leading to Black girls’ emotional responses that are seen as disobedience. In concluding Chapter 4, Morris emphasizes the centrality of mental health in creating positive educational solutions. These ideas set the stage for Chapter 5, which seeks to offer possible solutions that would dismantle the oppressive structures at work in juvenile court schools.
Chapter 4 Analysis
Whereas previous chapters discussed how American public schools push Black girls out of class and into contact with the criminal legal system, Chapter 4 analyzes a different group of schools: those juvenile court schools within the criminal legal system itself. When Black girls attend school in carceral spaces, they encounter heightened versions of the marginalization, discipline, and isolation they experienced in public school. While one would hope that these spaces are devoted to helping girls turn their lives around and prepare them for productive lives on the outside, Pushout reveals that juvenile court schools do far more harm than good. Morris emphasizes that juvenile court classrooms are hyperpunitive, doling out exceptionally harsh discipline to confined Black girls with pre-existing mental illness or trauma. The penal culture reinforces the pushout phenomenon instead of breaking it.
To properly explain the schools’ hyperpunitive nature, Morris structures her chapter around two interconnected topics: juvenile courts’ philosophy of discipline over education, and the relationship between Black girls’ mental health and juvenile court schools. Juvenile court schools value discipline over education; Black girls who attend these schools find little to no educational and intellectual support and are instead met with an atmosphere of surveillance and punishment. For example, one student named Mia explained to Morris that teachers can suspend students and take away their rights to recreation, eating with others, and socializing of any kind if the teachers believe the girls are misbehaving. This essentially leaves girls’ entire lives in the control of teachers prone to viewing Black girls through stereotyped, prejudiced lenses.
These schools’ hyperpunitive philosophy—combined with their poor teaching, inept curriculum, and lack of intellectual stimulation—creates a detrimental, traumatizing mix for the Black girls in attendance. Juvenile court schools quash Black girls’ aspirations almost immediately, denying girls the needed tools to succeed in life. In Chapter 4, Morris details case after case of interviewed girls where they lamented that while they had dreams and goals for themselves outside of confinement, they received no guidance from their carceral educators. Portia, for example, told Morris that she wanted to be a vet, but was concerned that her classes in juvenile court school were too easy and repetitive; Portia even called her schooling “a waste of my time” (146) because the juvenile court classes involve content she already knows and failed to educate her. Portia held a genuine goal for herself and, in her conversations with Morris, took her future aspirations seriously. The issue does not lie in Black girls’ lack of drive; the tragic element to juvenile court schools is that despite Black girls’ dreams for their lives, they are denied an education that would allow them to achieve the life they want.
An important aspect to this discussion is that the fault does not entirely lie in the educators. Morris repeatedly states that teachers in carceral schools have their own difficulties: “I have never met a teacher who actually ‘didn’t care’ about the education of girls in juvenile hall, but many teachers that I have encountered over the years have admitted to feeling overwhelmed […] or insufficiently trained” (150). Morris also remarks that many carceral educators feel powerless to change the schools’ curriculum and overall teaching philosophy. Just how these schools’ failures are not an individual issue from the girls’ side, it is not an individual issue on the educators’ side; both teachers and students desire change. Morris emphasizes, consequently, that juvenile court schools are expressions of systemic oppression. Through an intentional lack of resources and attention from those in government, these schools confine Black girls to a narrow path of poverty and push them out of the educational spaces that would liberate them.
An additional theme within the broader topic of juvenile court schools is how their philosophy, emphasizing discipline over education, exacerbates pre-existent mental illnesses. Morris asserts that girls with mental illnesses and past traumas are not simply suffering from lack of support in confinement—they are actively triggered. In juvenile court schools, acts that authorities deem punishable, “bad” behaviors are often closely related to (or explicitly because of) mental illnesses. Morris states that mental illness affects 81% of girls in the American juvenile justice system (152). This statistic is especially significant in context of the girls’ treatment once inside the system. Besides the oppression suffered inside the classroom, “Facilities are designed to increase surveillance, and programs and approaches often subject children to emotional and physical abuse that produce immediate and long-term harmful effects” (147). Recalling the issue of stressful environments triggering Black girls’ traumatized responses, juvenile court schools’ abusive disciplinary tactics trigger “bad” behaviors that are cries for help. However, these cries go unheard; instead, they are punished and repressed.
Thus, these carceral schools fuel the pushout phenomenon in two ways: through a sheer lack of education and through flagrant neglect of Black girls’ mental health. While the former is wholly unacceptable, the latter is especially dangerous in its potential to inflict permanent damage that can affect the girls for their entire lives. These abusive schools sabotage students’ futures, and the chapter’s pointed critique is necessary; Morris clarifies that these hard truths must be faced before building productive solutions. This chapter’s bleak content then sets the stage for the concluding portion of the book, which wholly focuses on such solutions.
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