11 Year Old US boy Arrested after refusing to Recite the American Pledge in School !

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An 11-year-old boy in Florida was arrested after he refused to
recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class and allegedly refused to
listen to orders from school officials and a resource officer.

According to Bay News 9, the boy got into an argument with
his substitute teacher earlier this month at Lawton Chiles Middle
Academy in Lakeland, Florida, after he refused to stand with his
classmates for the pledge.

After the boy told his substitute teacher that the American flag
is racist, she asked him, according to her report to the school,
“Why if it was so bad here, he did not go to another place to
live.” The boy reportedly responded, “They brought me here.” The
teacher then said, “Well, you can always go back, because I came
here from Cuba, and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore, I
would find another place to live.”

The teacher said she then called the office because she “did not
want to continue dealing with him.”

The school resource officer eventually arrested the boy. The
arrest affidavit claims the boy was disruptive, didn’t follow
commands, called school staff racist, and threatened to get the
school resource officer and principal fired and to beat the
teacher, according to Bay News 9. The boy told the news station
that he did not threaten the teacher with violence.

The student was taken to a juvenile detention center and charged
with disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without
violence. He was also suspended for three days.

A school spokesperson told Yahoo Lifestyle that
students aren’t required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in
class, but the substitute teacher “was not aware of this” and that
the teacher “will no longer be allowed to substitute at any of our
schools.”

Dhakira Talbot, the boy’s mother, said she was disappointed with
how the situation was handled — and that her son should not have
been arrested.

My son has never been through anything like this,” she said. “I
feel like this should’ve been handled differently. If any
disciplinary action should’ve been taken, it should’ve been with
the school. He shouldn’t have been arrested.”

To Talbot’s point, the situation is emblematic of what criminal
justice reform advocates have called the “school-to-prison
pipeline.” Discipline that in the past would have likely
involved just a school, the student, and the student’s parents
increasingly also involves law enforcement — leading to
consequences not just within the school but with the criminal
justice system as well. This can lead to lasting damage, not just
through a juvenile or criminal record but by also taking students
out of school (which can heighten the risk of criminal
activity).

In this case, the student was charged with what amounts to
disrupting a class. Maybe the kid was out of line. But should he
have been arrested and charged for being disruptive, or would
school discipline — maybe even just detention or a reprimand — have
been enough (if discipline was really necessary)?

For critics of the school-to-prison pipeline, it’s the
increasing reliance on the criminal justice system that’s
troubling. They claim the growing use of law enforcement in these
situations causes far more harm than good.

There’s evidence of a growing, racially disparate
school-to-prison pipeline

Over the past few decades, as lawmakers passed “tough on crime”
policies, that mentality has trickled down to schools across the
nation. As a result, schools began to outsource more and more
discipline to law enforcement. School disturbance laws like
Florida’s, which more than 20 states have, reflect that:
Whereas a teacher would have had to find a way to deal with a
disturbance on her own before, she can now call on police or the
criminal justice system to do the job.

The result has been a school-to-prison pipeline that acts as
many kids’ first exposure to the criminal justice system — and it
can lead to more interactions with the justice system later on,
because the lost school time and bad marks on kids’ records can
make it much more difficult to get ahead.

According to some research, just having a police officer on
school grounds can lead to higher exposure to the criminal justice
system and punitive policies. A report from the Justice
Policy Institute found schools with school resource officers have
nearly five times the rate of arrests for disorderly conduct as
schools without officers, even though the prevalence of law
enforcement in schools has little relationship to reported crime
rates.

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