Homeroom Security

While most educators, students, and parents accept new harsh policing and punishment strategies for schools such as police officers, armed security guards, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors, based on the assumption that they keep children safe, Aaron Kupchik argues that we need to think more carefully about how we protect and punish students. In Homeroom Security, Kupchik shows that these policies lead schools to prioritize the rules instead of students, so that students’ real problems—often the very reasons for their misbehavior—get ignored. Based on years of impressive field research, Kupchik demonstrates that the policies we have zealously adopted in schools across the country are the opposite of the strategies that are known to successfully reduce student misbehavior and violence. Our schools and our students can and should be safe, and Homeroom Security offers real strategies for making them so.