Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

What is called "problem behavior" really might not be a problem at all. Sometimes, classroom management is just about control and discipline, not learning. Like a teacher shouldn't respond to talking back the same way they would respond to physical violence! But sometimes the responses are almost equivalent when students get kicked out or failed for "willful defiance" or talking back or rolling their eyes.
Sometimes "problem behavior" is just a student dealing with oppression / asserting their worth. Like talking back can be a way of standing up for yourself (or at least it feels like that! And tbh I relate to that, even now)
Schools teach students to accept the PIC, from punishment-heavy classroom management to suspension to metal detectors.
PIC stuff (SROs, zero tolerance, suspensions, etc) gets in the way of supporting students. It hinders their education, on physical and emotional levels. Physically as in you can't learn if you're not in a classroom.... emotionally as in not wanting to show up in a place where you're not valued or respected.
Morris calling out how Black girls are left out of conversations about the school to prison pipeline was crucial. I'm walking away realizing that understanding the gendered aspects of the school to prison pipeline are important to understanding it more thoroughly / holistically.
I love love loved how Morris incorporated interviews with incarcerated Black girls in every chapter. It models the kind of respect and valuing of Black girls this book calls for, and it shows me as a reader that Morris was going to the people directly affected.

Critiques:

I get the impression a little bit that Morris thinks diversity training, curriculum, and basically all the actions associated with #DiversityAndInclusion would be the main factor in ending the criminalization of Black girls? And I disagree on this; I think giving students a say in teaching (having them lead lessons, asking directly for their feedback and actually applying that feedback, building appropriate connections with students, etc) would help much more. This would establish that they are in fact valued (self worth is one of the main reason's Morris says Black girls talk back, get loud, etc). This would also help better support students because they're literally telling you and showing you HOW to do those things.
Of course, a truly actually radically student centered classroom with the activities like that ones I described above (that I'm basically ripping off from Christopher Emdin's For White Folks), wouldn't be enough for some of the issues Morris talks about. Like, zero tolerance and SROs need to be dropped entirely. (Along with prisons and policing lmao). No amount of diversity training is going to stop an SRO from arresting a kid or at least putting them into contact with prisons and courts... because at the end of the day, that is literally the SRO's job. Even if they are forced to hear about racism, that's still their job. Even if that actually believe what they're forced to hear, that's still their job.
Which leads to me saying: I felt like this was very reformist rather than abolitionist. There was even a line that implied abolition is just about "let[ting] people out of prison" which is kind of like... hmmm.... what I've read about abolition talks about creating systems of support and care, bringing community together, really basically just making people care way more about each other and show up for each other.... thus leading to less harm, and being able to support each other when harm does happen.
There was not a lot of specific, practical shit. And the more I read theory, the more I really want that. Especially when it comes to teaching. This was annoying in the last chapter especially because Morris kept saying "alternative practice" over and over..... but doesn't give much of HOW to do alternative practice. She doesn't ever explain WHAT that is until Appendix B. Maybe this bothered me because in teaching I have to be super extremely clear and specific all the time always, and include examples. And this is more of a "why" book than a "how" book?
Sometimes Morris was really saying a whole lot of nothing. By that I just mean like wow I did not need intersectionality or variations of it to be defined like 20 times!!! Though I could see this being useful for people who aren't as familiar I guess? And sometimes it just felt like things were thrown in randomly and not expanded on or connected to the rest of the section.... or chapter.... or overall arguments of the book....
Building on that, I know in academic writing, typically people critique the jargon / vocabulary / word choice. This book didn't have that, which I am immensely grateful for. But another trend in academic writing is tangents, poor sentence fluency and repetitiveness. Yes please repeat your thesis! Repeat a few times throughout the book if you want! But not definitions and statistics that are tangentially related to your argument, it makes the writing confusing and the reader focus on the wrong thing. And I completely understand that sometimes you have to write a complicated long ass sentences to articulate your idea. But every other sentence being like that? It honestly made me dread reading this

Do I feel like I wasted my time? No. Would I recommend it? If you haven't learned that much about about misogynoir, absolutely. If you have, maybe?

I'm still gonna read the other book I have by this author because I did learn about how misogynoir manifests itself in classrooms and other educational contexts.

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kyrstin_p1989's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

This book challenges us to think beyond the paradigm of race to also include the paradigm of gender when we discuss and think about reforming schools to provide better educational opportunities for Black students. This book made me think about all the ways that children’s’ lives are not in their own control and how that lack of control affects their education in ways that we in this profession deem inappropriate or label as a lack of desire or care about learning. I liked how this book explained these critical issues in a straightforward manner — allowing the reader to understand the critical nature of these problems in hindering Black girls from getting an education.

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laurenleigh's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

This was a very unique reading experience for me. A lot of the facts explored in this text were not new to me, such as how Black kids are disproportionately in overcrowded public schools with zero budget or how Black girls are sexualized and seen as adults much faster than their white peers. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have lots to learn! What made this book so different was Morris’ style of narrative research. Yes, it’s important to read about the numbers and the studies done that prove how disadvantaged Black girls are. But Morris focuses on the girls themselves and their own words. Hearing direct quotes and listening to their stories was so impactful. In many ways, it leaves a stronger impression. I don’t have animmediate connection to a lot of kids, so this book provides a highly valuable avenue to hear Black girls and to listen to their important stories firsthand. The appendix is another extremely useful resource, offering explicit questions and plans of action for teachers, parents, and other adults who are looking to support the education of Black Girls. Um the other unique experience of this book...this was the worst audiobook I’ve ever listened to. When the narrator wasn’t quoting the girls, she was SO painfully robotic. I honestly question if something was wrong with the file I received from my library; it was so weird.

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.75

This was excellent. I loved the use of interviews. While much of the information in the book wasn’t new to me, it was presented in an engaging way. My only complaint is that the author seemed pretty resigned to the fact that SROs exist in schools, rather than advocating for their removal and replacement with better alternatives.

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archytas's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Our goal is to develop schools that our girls don't describe as "jail" or "prisons". This terminology has become so ingrained in their consciousness and experiences that it can be difficult for them to consider what a school which is not governed by discipline looks and feels like … for a large number of girls the fear of violence is greater than the actual demonstration of it".

Pushout is a great, if often terrifying, exploration of the reasons that African American girls are pushed out of schooling. Morris uses a combination of published and original research to explore the world of girls beset by racism, gendered violence, sexual trafficking and criminalization in their quest for an education. The combination works, as the book has both the rigor of a study, but also rings powerfully with the voices of those young women that Morris works with.
Some of the images I won't be able to get out of my head include the eight-year-old detained in a police car for two hours following a tantrum at school; the 11-year-old who introduces herself as a ho; and the way the girls describe the resident police officers at their school stirring up fights for entertainment. This paints a devastating portrait of schools so prisonised that conflict becomes impossible to diffuse, and teachers assess their success by their control, not their educational impact.
In particular I found the insights into the intersection of trauma, exploitation and ability to engage with highly rigid schooling thought provoking.

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bgoodbookclub's review against another edition

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dark informative sad tense slow-paced

4.0

This book has such powerful information that our country needs to support our Black girls and women. This book does read like a textbook so at times it was hard for me to focus but the content is so powerful, I am so glad I read it. I would suggest alternating it with fiction so that you can completely focus on the content and why it is so important. Our school system is failing our Black girls and this book dives into why. This book is an amazing choice if you are looking to educate yourself.

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