Is Special Education the New Eugenics? Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline and the Rise of Hip Hop Pedagogy and Transformative Justice
“Is Special Education the New Eugenics? Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline and the Rise of Hip Hop Pedagogy and Transformative Justice”
By: Dr. Anthony J. Nocella II
When: October 8, 2014 at 4:30pm
Where: Normandale Community College / Room Partnership Building / P 0806 A
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Today, more economically disadvantaged students, students of color, and students who learn differently are being pushed into special education with IEPs and stigmatized as having disabilities or disorders. This presentation will examine how special education is the first stop in the pipeline from schools to prisons. Dr. Nocella will examine how special education is a modern form of eugenics. Further, this presentation will critically discuss educational tools and systems that perpetuate standardization. He will also elaborate on the many ideas and players involved in the movement to dismantle the school to prison pipeline and those who profit off of school pushout and youth incarceration. Dr. Nocella will leave the audience with tools for community organizing and prepare teachers to be inclusive educators. He will also discuss how transformative justice in schools and Hip Hop pedagogy hold the key to dismantling the school to prison pipeline.
Anthony J. Nocella II, Ph.D., a Senior Fellow of the Dispute Resolution Institute at the Hamline Law School, is a professor of education and justice studies and is nationally recognized as a leading scholar-activist on the topic of the school to prison pipeline and academic repression. He is director of Save the Kids, a national grass-roots fully-volunteer organization dedicated to alternatives to and the end of youth incarceration and the school to prison pipeline. His most recent book, From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline, is being praised by national organizations such as the ACLU. He has organized nationally on the topic and has provided workshops for youth and adults in more than thirty different jails, prisons, and juvenile detention facilities. He is Editor of the Peace Studies Journal and Director of the Academy for Peace Education. Further, Nocella has published more than twenty books; some of his most recent works include Hollywood’s Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and Cultural Crisis (2010), Policing the Campus: Academic Repression, Surveillance, and the Occupy Movement (2013), and Educating for Action: Strategies to Ignite Social Justice (2014).
