Depicted here is the old Athens Lunatic Asylum (now a conference center and art gallery). An ominous structure, the complex of buildings remain standing today, situated high on a hill overlooking Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. As a college freshman in the early 1980’s, your professor was a volunteer here, where I worked in the locked men’s ward.
History
Early psychiatric asylums were imposing structures. Hundreds to hundreds of thousands of patients were held in these buildings for everything from depression to criminal behavior, and then there were those who, medically speaking, suffered from no mental condition at all. Historical records document one of the more common “afflictions” for which people were committed in the Athens Lunatic Asylum was “excessive masturbation.”
These were improvements, however, over no treatment or the condemnation to prisons, which had previously been the norm. Yet eventually many of these new psychiatric facilities saw an unmanageable increase in the number of patients. Staff and investigative journalistic reports indicated the overuse and unnecessary use of treatments in order to manage these growing populations. However, it was not until the 1990s when many of these expansive asylums were completely overhauled into modern medical centers or closed because of underuse, underfunding, or scandal.
Much was learned during that period in psychiatric history, but much remains to be done in terms of advancements and understanding of medical disorders globally. Stories of abuses, tragic deaths, and murders can be found in old newspaper archives for many of these buildings that remain as towering ghosts. Most of the structures have crumbled, but like the memories of their patients, they remain.
This particular asylum was built in 1852 and enlarged on several subsequent occasions in 1859, 1866, 1881 and 1902. Finally closed in 1989/1990, it was bought by a property developer, who a few years later converted half of the site into houses. The main asylum buildings are Grade II listed buildings, which means they are protected and cannot be changed or demolished [we used this lower-level corridor to move between the buildings when the weather was bad. imagine walking here at night!]
Erving Goffman
The full title of sociologist Erving Goffman’s work is Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. The book, although somewhat dated at this point, was considered during its time to be a key text in the development of deinstitutionalization in the United States; it represents one of the first sociological examinations of the social dynamics bound up in being a mental patient.
Theory & Methods
Goffman’s book conveys the substance of his participant observation field work and outlines a theory of what he calls the “total institution.” From Autumn 1954 to the end of 1957 Goffman was a visiting member of the Laboratory of Socio-environmental Studies of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Goffman conducted field work at St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he posed as a pseudo-employee of the hospital (he was fired to assist the athletic director). This permitted him to make observations and collect ethnographic data on selected aspects of patients’ social life. As it is typically the case with most participant observation studies, controls, measurements, and statistical evidence were not used.
The focus of this book, as Goffman makes clear, is the world of the patient – not the world of the staff. To this end, Goffman made his personal bias a matter of record, for he admitted he arrived at the hospital with no great respect for the agencies involved with psychiatric practice nor for the discipline of psychiatry.
According to David Mechanic, “Goffman brought to the hospital his own personal biography and assumptions, which shaped how he saw events. To a middle-class, independent-minded professor, who strongly valued personal autonomy and the right to be eccentric, the regimentation of the mental hospital must have looked repressive indeed. Later in Goffman’s life, after he had to live through an episode of mental illness involving another person close to him, he is said to have remarked that had he been writing Asylums at that point, it would have been a very different book.”
The concept of the total institution is perhaps the most significant theoretical contribution of the book; students of social theory might notice that, as a construct, it shares much in common with Max Weber’s “Ideal Type.” For Goffman, a total institution is a place of work and residence where large numbers of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, come together to live an enclosed formally administered life [Note that as we move forward and later take up the work of Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish, we will see yet another example of how a theorist discusses total institutions, which Foucault describes as “complete and austere institutions”].
Goffman’s Typology of Total Institutions – 5 Types
- Institutions established to care for people felt to be both harmless and incapable: orphanages, poor houses, and nursing homes.
- Institutions established to care for people felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one:leprosariums, mental hospitals, and tuberculosis sanitariums.
- Institutions organized to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the people thus sequestered not the immediate issue: concentration camps, P.O.W. camps, penitentiaries, and jails.
- Institutions purportedly established to better pursue some worklike tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds: colonial compounds, work camps, boarding schools, ships, army barraks, and large mansions from the point of view of those who live in the servants quarters.
- Institutions designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious; examples are convents, abbeys, manasteries, and other cloisters.
Intellectual Focus
A key part of Goffman’s work can be described as “close observation of individual behavior in a social context.” There are two important ends here — individual behavior and social context. Goffman wants to shed light on both poles of this description. In particular, he almost always expresses interest in the social norms that surround action — the expectations and norms through which other people interpret and judge the individual’s conduct.
In Asylums, Goffman is mainly focused on providing descriptive detail as he aims to account for the institutional socialization process that occured when someone was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. He defines this process as “institutionalization.” He looks at the process and effort that is required in order to instill and maintain predictable and regular behavior on the part of both “guard” and “captive,” suggesting that many of the features of such institutions serve the ritual function of ensuring that both classes of people know their function and social role – this is how they are inescapably institutionalized.
The central feature of total institutions, in Goffman’s view, was that they broke down barriers separating sleep, play, and work. The totalistic features of asylums, he wrote, could be be found in other institutions, namely commercial and medical establishments [and I would add here prisons too].
The handling of many human needs is another key factor of the bureaucratic institution. According to Goffman, the institutionalization process socialises people into the role of a “good patient.” That is, someone who is ‘dull, harmless and inconspicuous’, which in turn reinforces notions of chronicity in severe mental illness. Related to this is a process that Goffman describes as the mortification of the self. A patient’s notions of self was subjected to a dramatic change for the worse due to the debilitating atmosphere in all total institutions, regardless of how therapeutic or non-therapeutic a hospital intended to be.
While people come from a social context in which they have some sense of a personal identity and occupy different roles, these aspects of their lives are systematically stripped from them as their sense of themselves are mortified, pathogolized and negated, leading to what Goffman defines as “disculturation.” Here, instead of curing or reducing the illness, this process leads to demoralization, skill deterioration and role dispossession and renders people less capable of managing life in the outward world. Goffman notes that in addition to disculturation from their identity and previous roles, acculturating patients and inmates to life in a total institution does little, if anything, to prepare them for the contingencies they will encounter again upon discharge; it prepares them only for remaining within the institutional setting.
Goffman concludes from his investigation that taking a mentally ill person out of his or her life context, hospitalizing him or her to a psychiatric hospital and then returning the person to the same life context is similar to taking a drowning man out of a lake, teaching him how to ride a bicycle and putting him back into the lake.
During the “inpatient phase,” patients arrive at a realization that society has forsaken them.
Over time patient/inmates acquire strong feelings about their time spent there, which they tend to think of as time taken from one’s life or time wasted.
Human needs in the asylum are handled in an impersonal and bureaucratic mode.
The social distance between the staff and inmates is great; each group develops and antipathy, where they tend to be unfriendly toward the other.
The book concludes that adjusting the inmates to their role has at least as much importance as “curing” them. In the essay “Notes on the Tinkering Trades” Goffman concluded that the “medicalization” of mental illness and the various treatment modalities are offshoots of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution; that the so-called “medical model” for treating patients was a variation on the way trades and craftsmen of the late 19th century repaired clocks and other mechanical objects.
Other Studies & Perspectives
Asylums is one of a number of books published in the 1950s and 1960s that explored the characteristics of psychiatric hospitals, which doubtless had a major impact on patients and affected the course of their illness. Other prominent works include studies by Stanton and Schwartz (1954), Belknap (1956), Dunham and Weinberg (1960), Strauss et al. (1964), and Scheff (1966). These studies all relied on qualitative data in describing the meaning of psychiatric hospitalization for patients, criticized the psychiatric hospital and charged that it had a harmful effect on them.
Belknap (1956), Dunham and Weifiberg (1960), Goffman (1961), Cumming and Cumming (1962) pointed out the fact that closed institutional regimes, with their common accompaniments of neglect, pauperism, and authoritarianism, were not only inhumane but harmful. As was the case in Goffman’s work, the hospital was portrayed as an authoritarian system that forces patients to define themselves as mentally ill, change their behavior and thinking, adjust to institutional life, accept restrictions and suffer humiliations.
Franco Basaglia, a leading Italian psychiatrist who inspired and was the architect of psychiatric reform in Italy also defined the mental hospital as an oppressive, locked and total institution, in which prison-like punitive rules are applied to patients, so that the person’s self-concept is gradually broken down in such a way as it eliminates its subjective contents. Patients, doctors, and nurses are all similarly subjected (at different levels) to the same process of institutionalism.
Critics, however, cast doubt on Goffman’s claims and question the acuracy of his critique. Numerous studies have been done relevant to Goffman’s depiction of the experience of the mental patient, using patient surveys. None of these studies has the theoretical brilliance of Goffman’s work or the quality of his insight, but they consistently fail to replicate his view of the patient’s experience (Linn 1968a, 1968b; Weinstein 1979, 1983, 1994).
One critic, Raymond Weinstein, reviewed the empirical literature and presented a report that examined the importance and applicability of Goffman’s Asylums three decades after its first publication. Goffman’s book, he writes:
“Achieved classic status due to its extensive academic citation, anthology reprinting, use in legal proceedings, and public influence. However, over the years the accuracy and generalizability of Goffman’s total institution model of mental hospitals have been seriously questioned.
An analysis of the criticisms of Goffman’s theories, methods, and conclusions suggested that his work was biased and deficient in a number of ways but at times was misinterpreted or misrepresented. As a research study Asylums may be outdated and of little value to mental health practitioners due to the revolutionary changes in psychiatry that have occurred since the mid-1950s. As an academic work, however, Asylums continues to enjoy a high reputation perhaps because of its theoretical utility and teaching value as well as the popularity of Goffman’s many other published works. The total institution model may have been limited from the start and doubts remain as to its validity today, but the longevity of Asylums is assured as Goffman’s picture of mental hospitalization is firmly planted in the minds of sociologists, psychiatrists, patients’ rights advocates, and students of formal organizations.”
It is the view of Weinstein and a number of other researchers that most patients did not report feeling betrayed; many, in fact, reported being helped by hospitalization, and viewed the hospital as a refuge from impossible problems and stresses. Moreover, some patients from disadvantaged backgrounds viewed the hospital experience as less coercive and less depriving than their usual life situation. The studies do provide evidence of stigma associated with mental illness but negate the profoundly negative conception of the experience depicted by Goffman.
Goffman’s observations, nonetheless, remain credible because readers of his analysis find his depictions meaningful and convincing, because he makes it easy for them to see themselves as the hypothetical patient in the context he describes. Goffman in this respect conveys a certain kind of “truth” that cannot be easily dismissed. This type of contextual credibility is often persuasive, having the quality of verstehen embodied in the methodology of Max Weber.
Sources
Erving Goffman (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates.
Raymond M. Weinstein (1994) “Goffman’s Asylums and the Social Situation of Mental Patients.” Psychiatry, (Nov): 57 (4):348-67.
David Mechanic (1989) “Medical Sociology: Some Tensions Among Theory , Method, and Substance,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 30 (June): 147-160.
Cynthia Pelayo (2013) Essential Guide: Abandoned Insane Asylums. Downloaded from http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/abandoned-insane-asylums Last accessed Feb 13, 2016.
Discussion Questions
Institutional social settings establish the categories of persons that are likely to be encountered there; the routines and rules of social intercourse are established in these settings and they permit us to get on with our business without having to committ too much special attention or thought. What are some of the institutional social rules that govern social interaction in college that you picked up on? How did you become “institutionalized” and learn how to assume the role of the “good student?”
Describe a different social setting (using any or as many of Goffman’s concepts as you can) in which you have been a participant, such as at a hospital, prison, or any other structured institutional setting. Be sure to cite a specific concept and explain how it applied to your experience.
How might Goffman’s work be used to explain what academics refer to as the “School to Prison” pipeline?
How might our present patterns of incarceration in the United States reflect some of these echoes from the past?
There are various institutional social rules that govern social interaction within the college atmosphere. One example would be that we are enforced to work in groups. In my chemistry class have to work in groups of no less than three students. This forces us to communicate with our peers and share our own ideas. We have become institutionalized to be “good students” because we are introduced to punishments, such as getting kicked out of school, if we misbehave. These repercussions mold us into ideal individuals that will be well behaved in our future work environment.
As a high school student I was apart of a club that would take animals to nursing homes as a type of therapy for the residents. They were apart of the institution that dealt with patients that are incapable of caring for themselves because they would need our assistance with holding the animals and petting them. They are separated from society and are commonly forgotten about. Each time we were to visit they would remember us, and recall memories from their childhood whether they were true or not. It meant so much to them that we remembered them, and we acted as a small piece of the society that they have been alienated from.
Goffman’s work can explain the idea of “School to Pipeline” because if students are pushed out of the classroom, then they may feel unwanted or that there is not a point for them to continue with their education. If students feel this way then they might be more easily influenced and may end up in the criminal justice system.
It is very challenging to compare present patterns of incarceration to past patterns, however there are similarities present. Prisoners are still separated from society and told what they are expected to be. They are all treated the same, even though they may have committed different crimes. They are all being lead towards the same goal of becoming society’s idea of an ideal or good citizen.
The social environment in which I have been part is my school. I will describing some of the concepts of Goodman’s social environment. First I will quote a concept of Goffman’s: “The central feature of total institutions was that they broke down barriers separating sleep, play, and work. Also, he wrote that there could be other institutions such as commercially and medical establishments. This could apply to the school that I went, because for the teachers students were seen as objects, or numbers. When students used to arrived to school it was like being in a prison because automatically the child lost the way of thinking.
For Goffman’s social institution was a process that occurred when someone was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital, this defined as the process of “institutionalization”. This is the process of effort that requires to order and teach and to maintain regular behavior from both parts the “protective and the captive”. Making sure that both kinds of people knows the function as well their social-role of individual institutionalized.
In my case socialization as the way Goffman’s describes a certain way I knew what my role could be and the way it could be describe as “captive”. For instance, school which is the place where I was going to learn, but at the same time receive orders from my teachers that would become protective just as Goffman’s describes.
The most serious issue is that both protector and captive is the forgiveness of ,the essence of what really mattered or maybe the guards forgot socialization was very common.
In the school I used to attend parents used to drop their children even though, teachers used to transmit their teachings no one used to asked those kids how they used to feel emotionally. Now reality the reality is totally different when children arrive to school and they can go to the psychological department that takes care of children not only academically , but as well emotionally and that’s what really important for the child because they spend most of their time in school. It’s very important for them to feel loved, and to have a high- self-steam.
You could say that the social environment of all places where there is a lot of population has a common principle just as Goffman described. Nowadays in these modern times it’s possible that each institution provide better environment for patients, students as well assistants.
It’s important to notice that Goffman’s criticizes the lack of socialization which is the most important point of failure of these institutions. To make people feel at ease or in a more enjoyable seriousness as well important to bring cure to the patient, just like it applies to my case described as a higher learning quality.
Goffman’s “Total Institution,” on control of space and control of bodies in that people are placed in boxes and are regulated to follow a set program from authority. The prison institutions are designed to inflict punishments if prisoners do not adhere to the rules and obey authority.
The prison system being a Total Institution relegate citizens to “second class citizen” status. Once you have a felony your rights to vote, access to government assistance, financial aid, housing, and finding quality jobs are restricted or totally taken away. Especially the mass incarceration of African Americans in that they are being systematically targeted by racial profiling, stop and frisk, and getting unfair punishments for crimes that does not warrant ten years or more in prison.
Foucault focused on the dynamics of power relations and the shift from government control to prison became the vocal point of punishment by reform and the control of body within society’s penal institutions. Punishment is seen as a political tactic to deter others from committing a crime and plays on their minds in adhering to the laws and rules within society to create fear. This is a way of normalizing power in that your thought pattern is always to do the right thing, because you may never know who’s watching. Hence, we self modulate our own behavior by self evaluating and always keeping ourselves in checked as a institutionalize Society.
Social interaction in college is governed by many social rules that play in to Goffman’s theory of what he calls a “total institution”. These rules do not only apply to students, but adjuncts and faculty are subjected to certain regulations as well. Hunter College is somewhat similar to Goffman’s fourth type of institution that was established to better perform work-like tasks.
The institutionalization process at Hunter College socializes student’s into roles, for example, the role of a “good student”. In order to achieve this label by others one must follow certain rules and regulations set by either the school or the teacher. A good student will assimilate to a daily classroom routine that will include; arriving on time, not using electronic devices, raising their hand to speak, addressing the professor correctly, completing the assigned tasks on time and many other rules that may be specific to a teacher’s own classroom setting.
Hunter College has institutionalized myself and other students by conducting it’s school system in a highly bureaucratic manner. For example, anyone who has ever stood in the hour long line outside the financial office has been a victim. The process is long, frustrating and very impersonal. You are acknowledged by a student identification number, given specific instructions to follow and then hurried along so the next number (person) can have their rushed turn as well. Goffman defines disculturation as one’s personal identity being systematically stripped from them. Each student at Hunter College has gone through this process of disculturation to some degree because each student at Hunter College is sadly only known as a number; this is also quite similar to how a prison runs.
Goffman classified total institutions into 5 types. Although No. 4, “Institutions purportedly established to better pursue some worklike tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds,” is closest to total institutions, college is not generally regarded as total institution, as students have rights to choose to apply, and even after they enrolled into the college; they still have life outside of the colleges.
There are, however, some similar characteristics between college and total institutions.
One example is class registration. Speaking about my personal experience, I registered and paid the tuition for a certain class for this summer session, long time before the class starts. But I received a notification from the department the day before the first day of class that the class was cancelled due to low enrollment. Therefore, I had to register for another class instead. Since online registration was closed, I had to show up on the next class which I was interested in the next week. I then had to ask the professor to approve my request, go to the department to have a sheet stamped by another professor, write an explanation of adding class, bring it to the office to get my academic adviser’s approval, and pay a late-registration fee. I understand that it was no one’s fault, but I still felt like I was pushed around by college for nothing. Even it is not a law, we have to follow the institutional social rules as long as we are in the institution. This is a similarity of college and total institutions.
College students become institutionalized by following the rules/expectations of the college. “Good student” is supposed to attend class on time, stay the entire class time, speak up in class, respect others, ask questions to professors, do homework, be prepared for the exams, and maintain their GPA high.
Goffman pointed out that total institutions destroy inmates’ identity and make them become what they expect to be. Goffman’s work is used to explain the “School to Prison” pipeline theory, according to which students who are considered to be unsuitable for society will be placed into criminal justice systems. In this criminal justice system, students are not taught how to act better in a real society, but are disciplined and forced to follow the rules in a system.
Our rights and freedoms are being invaded when American Capitalism starts to look like a police and surveillance state. For example, Ez-Pass’s are allowed to track our license plates and the cops and FBI are allowed to use facial recognition software to know our whereabouts. This concerns me because when we feel invaded by the government this minimizes what we can do privately. For example, the NSA listens to our phone conversations. This is an example of our right to privacy being violated.
School is a place where students receive an education. When teachers are like prison guards, students feel like their behavior is being controlled. Having to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom makes students feel like they are incapable of taking care of themselves. When teachers are constantly checking students backpacks, the students feel like teachers do not trust them and their rights and freedoms are being invaded. Freedom of speech is not being respected if teachers are constantly reporting students on everything they say. This concerns me on many levels, most of which is that students may not want to go to school if they are treated and disciplined and watched every which way.
Social media and other devices are also using our personal information For example, Facebook accounts are being hacked and people are impersonating individuals by making other accounts. Facebook is not the only place where people are being hacked, email is another example. Individuals could send spams and virus from individuals email accounts. Credit card information is also being stolen. This concerns me because I wonder where individuals could feel safe and not have their information being taken from them.
Everyone is feeling that their privacy is being invaded and the wealthy are benefited. The wealthy want to know if their employees have been arrested and look at their social media before they hire them. They also want the poor to behave a certain way. I am concerned that the wealthy could do anything because of our for profit American capitalist system.
After studying Goffman, distinct comparisons can be made between CUNY students and inmates in either an asylum or prison, in terms of a total institutions as described by Goffman. Although CUNY does not fully fall into one of the fives groupings of total institutions, CUNY is nonetheless an institution. And CUNY, more specifically Hunter College, exhibits many of the same features, as listed by Goffman, found in a total institution.
For instance, as Goffman states of total institutions, “…many human need[s] [is handled] by the bureaucratic organization…” Hunter College is rather bureaucratic, in that many offices do not reside in the same space, nor do they fulfill the same roles. There is always a “higher up, if you will. This forces many students to have to often and constantly travel between many different offices, as there is a lack of inter-office communication and there is no central source where one may obtain necessary information.
Next, Hunter College compares to a total institution, because as Goffman notes, “each phase of a member’s daily activity will be carried out in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together”. This is evident in Hunter College as all students will take a course with a sizeable group of other students, which can sometimes consist of hundreds of students within that one group. Moreover, all students are given the same syllabus at the start of the semester and are all held to the same standard. Students are also required to complete the same tasks, and even complete their examinations together at the same time.
Additionally, Hunter College resembles a total institution as it correlates with another of Goffman’s totalistic features; “all phases of the day’s activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole circle of activities being imposed from above through a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials”. This feature would tie in with Goffman’s rationale that “the contents of the various enforced activities are brought together as parts of a single overall rational plan purportedly designed to fulfill the official aims of the institution”. Students create a repetitive weekly class schedule, based on the college’s offerings which they are expected and paying to adhere by. The syllabus, as aforementioned, is structured and regimented to provide students with an overview of the coursework and what will be studied over the course of the semester and when, in that particular class. There is very little to no leeway in which a student may deviate from the predetermined course tasks, without risking a failing grade—which could jeopardize their standing in the college. In addition to the syllabus, like many post-secondary educational institutions, Hunter College has an explicit code of conduct that students must follow to maintain their standing in the institution, which is integral of their survival in society. Overall, the purpose of passing through the institution of Hunter College is to obtain the credentials to be deemed eligible for employment positions necessary for subsistence and to maybe even live out the “American Dream”.
Total institutions are described as being taken away from the outside world and forced to adhere to the rules of that certain institution. Being a college student, in a way, enforces their own type of rules on how to be “good students”. One way in which we have been institutionalized is through the use of syllabuses, where it gives students a lay out of what is expected of them and how/when they’re to do a specific assignment. In college, the whole role of being a good college student is based on your academic standing. Any student, who falls short of the college’s rule on what is considered a passing GPA of maybe 2.5 and higher, is placed on academic probation or not in good standing with the college. One of the characteristics of total institutions is that it strips a person’s identity and molds them into what the institutions wants. In a way, college is the same way because it conforms you to get ready for the job force and enables you to critically think about certain situations. It can also give students the notion that in order to be successful in life, they would have to obtain a college degree.
Goffman.’s work can be used to explain the “School to Prison” pipeline because society puts students who they feel are incapable of obtaining an education and placing them in criminal justice systems. Instead of teaching kids to know and do better, it’s more as if they’re disciplining them and conforming students to the institution’s rules, which
Goffman says is one of the components of a total institution. In Asylums, Goffman speaks on the fact that total institutions such as mental hospitals and prisons strips the old identity of a person which allows the institution to shape the person into what they want them to be.
After spending about 5 years in the CUNY system (2 years of community college and 3 years in a senior college) I constantly reflect on my experience and avoid spending too much time on how it made me feel, instead, I now reflect on what the underlying goals the institution anticipated to achieve before we graduated and exited the system. I realize now that students believe they are the sole operator of their college experience; from the selection of courses to constantly waiting on long lines in the Financial Aid office to the endless amount of paperwork and forms that need to be filled out regarding class changes, grade changes, major/minor declarations and loan requests, Handling of human needs by the bureaucratic organization. (Goffman) I’ve failed to mention the number of times I’ve power-walked from one department to the next, being transferred from one person to the other and all to correct an administrative error. At the time, as frantic as I was, I never thought how unfortunate it was that I was forced to do these things, at the time I believed I HAD to do these things or my position as a student in my college would no longer exist. I now understand that CUNY is obviously not a total institution but it does involve similar totalistic features. As Ervin Goffman has mentioned there is a social arrangement in which 1) all aspects of our lives are conducted in the same place under the same single authority ie students of CUNY attend classes in the building itself however, the check that is made to pay for a students tuition does not go to the resources they need to improve the experience in school, such as working and updated equipment and the renovations in buildings that are falling apart. 2) Members daily activities will be in the company of many others, that are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. This concept relates to the overcrowding in school and because we are given the illusion of choice that there is a diversity of courses we can choose from, we are ultimately bound together as we follow the same regime. 3) Days activities are tightly scheduled with one activity prearranged time into the next that is imposed from above through a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. This illustrates a typical day at CUNY through formal due dates, the credits/grades needed to move on to the next level of study. Reflecting on these aspects irritates me of my past self; of how docile and institutionalized I became and blindly following and conforming to these standards imposed on me without questioning Am I really doing all of this running around for myself? Or was it designed to fulfill official aims of the institution
From the beginning of our school careers, we are taught what it means to be a “good student”. Getting good grades isn’t the only thing that’s expected of us when it comes to being a model student. There’s much more than that to think about. For example, in elementary school we are punished for various wrongdoings by being sent to the time out chair. When I was elementary school, the time out chair was set up away from the rest of the class, usually by the door way. Thinking back to Asylums, the time out chair being set apart from the rest of the class and the child missing out on ongoing class activities as part of their punishment can relate to one of Goffman’s discussion about total institutions. Goffman mentions that these institutions block patients off from the outside social world for some time, which in a way can be seen with the time out example. The child is not allowed to interact with anyone while in the time out chair and is “blocked off” from the rest of the classroom during his or her punishment. Another interesting thing about the time out example that I thought about was shame, which can actually also relate to Foucalt’s “Docile Bodies”. Sitting in that time out chair for an amount of time and being set apart from the rest of the class is quite embarrassing. When I was in kindergarten, I was put in the time out chair and the assistant principal had walked in during the time I served my punishment. Being that he was a significantly authoritative individual, I felt even more embarrassed sitting in that chair and thought to myself that I didn’t want to do wrong again. This is exactly why the teachers had set up the time out chairs, to hopefully give students an incentive to follow all classroom rules instead of having to experience the shame and isolation that comes with sitting in the time out chair.
Going into middle school and high school, we are still expected to conform to certain rules. If we don’t, we pay for it. Of course, they don’t have time out chair punishments in middle school or high school. Instead, students are punished by serving detention. In my middle school, if a student committed an especially serious offense, these serious offenses including things like getting into fights, putting your hands on an authority figure of the school and so on, that student would serve about a week or so in what they called “in-house”. In house was to be served in the dingy basement of the school, away from the rest of the school, and they would only be served cheese sandwiches for lunch instead of getting the privilege of eating the slightly better school lunch with their friends. Similarly, prisoners are isolated from the rest of society and served mediocre prison food. So it’s almost as if these punished students are being incarcerated in their own schools as a way to teach them a lesson and try to convince them to be a “good student” and follow the rules.
We carry these incentives to conform all the way to college because we’ve been taught that if we do not conform, then we will be punished. In college, we have to conform to the rules set by them. In order to take a certain class, you’d have to have completed a prerequisite with a certain grade. Professors put together a syllabus consisting of their expectations. In many cases, we’re taking a class with about two hundred other students and to the professor we’re mostly just referred to as the A Student of the C Student. We’re expected to conform to social norms by sitting behind our desks, not on top of them, not at the professor’s desk, and not on the floor. If we were to sit in a place other than behind our desks, such as the floor for example, we’d most likely be looked at kind of strangely by both our professor and our colleagues. I think that one idea that Goffman was trying to get across in Asylums was that the creation of these rules creates a distinction between right and wrong and therefore produces an idea of what is normal and what is not.
CUNY- City University of New York, although not deemed as a ‘total institution’ under Goffman’s typology of total institutions is an institution nonetheless. Goffman talks about the prison as an institution discussing the role of the inmates and the role of the guards as a form of superior. CUNY makes me feel institutionalized because I always feel as if there’s someone else I need to answer to. The inmates that Goffman talks about are at the mercy of the guard. Based on their behaviors they will get their rewards, if they misbehave the guards can withhold things from them. The inmates are on a schedule, when to eat, when to sleep, when they get recreational time etc. Granted students of the CUNY system get to pick their own schedules, but only based off of what is offered. Every semester I am at CUNY’s mercy when it comes to picking classes. Not only does registration time literally turn into the Hunger Games, but my job availability is at stake depending on when I am allowed to take classes. My job schedule changes according to my schedule at school, my ‘recreational time’ changes depending on when I’m not in school, I spend more time at school than my own home. Coming to school starts to feel mundane, repetitive, following the same schedule everyday. We, like the inmates who get rewarded on good behavior, get one thing in exchange for the other. If we submit this paperwork on time we’ll get financial aid, if we don’t sign up for the right thing at the right time it’ll just prolong our time at this institution. When classes get closed off we have to scramble for our next options. At least in that we differ from prison inmates, we somehow get options, provided and allowed by the institution of course. Much like the inmates we have one goal, TO GET OUT. But getting out may not be the best thing. We go to school and learn to behave within the school system to get a job, so that in that job they don’t have to institutionalize us, we come in institutionalized! We are institutionalized in one place so that we know how to conform and act within the next institution, because that is all our lives really come down to, moving from one institution to the next.
During my numerous years spent as a student in the CUNY system, I have always believed in the notion that CUNY students are lucky because we are granted the opportunity to receive a quality education at a reasonable price. It was not until reading Goffman and discussing his theories and work in class that I find myself second guessing this “privilege”. I never considered CUNY to be a total institution, students have the freedom to leave when they please and not all of our necessities are provided by our school. However, when I really reflect on my experiences, I realize that we really aren’t given the chance to leave. As CUNY students we are conditioned to believe that this is our only option therefore this is the best option. We are not informed of the fact that we can experience a different university with the possibility of paying less than the CUNY tuition, this would be made possible with grants and tuition assistance programs. However, because different options are not proposed students find themselves content with this institution which has many of the characteristics of a total institution. For example; at CUNY, similar to total institutions; the contents of enforced activities (classes) are bought together as part of an overall plan designed to fulfill the aims of the institution. For CUNY this aim would ultimately be to graduate. This makes me realize that I deserve to be represented by more than a student EMPL ID number and I also deserve to learn in a class where all the equipment is functional.
The ideal “good student” is supposed to attend classes, get good grades and also follow the rules. The path that a student goes during his/her college years (in CUNY) is a dragging force toward this role model. A good student is so obsessed with getting A grades that learning, speculating about different subjects and questioning are all the next priorities. In other words, an average student prefers to find the easiest way to get a good grade and follow it and this way in most cases is not the way that the student learns the most. For example, a significant percentage of the exams in Hunter College are multiple-choice. Thus the studying leans toward learning highlight that can be tested through such questions and learning tricks to answer them.
Another aspect of education in college that resembles a totalitarian system is lack of individuality. The number of students admitted in the college are much more that the capacity of college (presumably because of public colleges’ financial problems). As a consequence, it is hard if not impossible for students and teachers to have sufficient personal interaction. Classes are overcrowded and a participatory discussion, which encourages students to ask questions, becomes impossible.
“School to Prison” pipeline is metaphorically referring to the inevitable social channel, which drags students of poor, and lower classes to incarceration and imprisonment. The children of poor families are seen as potential “criminals” and deviants and regulation and institutionalization of their lives should be started soon, before they become an uncontrollable threat. In other words, such a system makes it more likely that poor students end up in prison. Minor wrongdoings are punished harshly and it is hard to escape such a system (pipeline) and this shows the totalitarian aspect of it. Such a system looks necessary in order to control these classes, especially in a society with enormous and increasing inequality and injustice.
In his piece “Asylums,” Goffman alludes to the idea of social conformity. The individuals that were placed in these institutions were subject to being institutionalized because they did not fit the societal norms, or follow the unwritten sociétal rules, if you will. These same rules are many times carried over in college. They are reflected in the way students are taught they should have interactions with each other, so as to limit the possibilities of unconformity. One example can be seen in how the professor is granted the ability to decide how the students should sit in the classroom. Depending on the layout, although in most cases this is the case, the students have limited interactions. This in turn allows for the continuance of students being “good students,” ie, those students who do not talk during class, pay attention, and have limited interactions. In addition, it forces the students to pay attention to the authority figure in the room, that being the professor. Another example of how the university institution has shown us how to follow what is given, is by requiring that the professors have a syllabus. This syllabus serves as a guide of what is and is not allowed in the classroom like technology in some cases, outside the classroom like plagiarizing, and what is expected in terms of assignments and due dates. In many ways, the university system has paved the way for its students to very broadly, learn what it means to follow things that are given to you, to respect the rules from the institution, and conform to the social norm.
One social setting in which I have been involved that would qualify as a total institution was Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, where I was a patient for severe depression. Upon admission, mortification of my person occurred primarily through the stripping process. I was stripped of all my belongings, including even a sweater, despite the fact that it was the dead of winter. The stripping process included locking up all of my extra undergarments, and I was extremely humiliated to have to remain in the same pair of underwear the entire time I was a patient, which fortunately was only a week- a short stay compared to many of the other patients. I was given a pair of scrubs, the pants of which were several sizes too large, and I was forcibly embarrassed repeatedly as they fell down over and over again because they had no drawstring to tighten the waist. I felt completely dehumanized. The possessions that I always walked around with, my phone, my driver’s license, my headphones, cigarettes- things that were basically a part of my identity- had been taken away from me, and I became a ‘patient’. In fact, I was often referred to as ‘patient’ because the staff did not know or care to learn my name. My sink did not work, and because we were not allowed in other patients’ rooms, I was told I would have to put up with not brushing my teeth or washing my hands for as long as it took to get the sink fixed, which ended up being the entire time I was there. I felt like an animal. All the things that meant so much to me on the outside- school in particular- ceased, and no one cared how distressed I was that I was missing difficult classes and work I did not know how I would make up. I had very strong feelings that I was wasting time, my life, and that I could not get that lost time back. As Goffman astutely points out, it was not merely the harshness of the conditions in the hospital that caused me to feel exiled from my life- it was the disconnection from my social and home life. The hospital operated on a set of house rules and privileges. If you followed all of the rules for two weeks straight, and you didn’t throw fits or have angry outbursts or do anything destructive to yourself or someone else, you were allowed to go up to the caged-in roof for 15 minutes of walking around time a day. If you followed all the rules and did what you were supposed to all day long, you were rewarded with a cookie and half a sandwich at snack-time at night. Any type of autonomous decision making was absent from daily life, which consisted of tightly controlled scheduled group activities all day long. One completely lacked control over one’s own person. I remember watching another patient, who had received some bad news on the telephone (the use of which was restricted to designated times), have an angry breakdown and consequently be strapped down to a bed in a padded “quiet room”. Watching the mortification of that patient only contributed to my own mortification process. One aspect of life at Bellevue that Goffman talks about as a feature of total institutions is that misbehaviors in one sphere of life carry over into another sphere of life. When I was unenthusiastic about eating the disgusting food, I was marked as having a bad attitude and told I was ineligible for roof privileges because of said attitude. Goffman also points out that that rules are so abundant and closely enforced as to cause inmates constant anxiety and the feeling that they are always being watched or judged, causing chronic anxiety about the rules and chronic anxiety over being caught breaking any of them. I certainly suffered from this. My desire to “get out” was so great that I did not want to toe the line of one rule, for fear that I would be kept “on the inside” longer.
After being subjected to the mortifying process, I had to find a way to adapt to life “on the inside”, four modes of which Goffman discusses. Goffman mentions situational withdrawal, rebellion, colonization, conversion, and what he calls ‘playing it cool’, in which a combination of colonization, conversion, and inmate loyalty are pursued. This became a problem when I was obsessively romantically pursued by another patient; I wanted to appear loyal to my fellow patients and not report this particular patient to the staff, but he was really bothering me to the point where I couldn’t leave my room without being propositioned by him. In the end, I chose to ‘play it cool’ to maximize my chances of leaving the hospital as undamaged as possible, and as quickly as possible. I simply pretended he did not exist and intentionally stayed in my room for all of the time I was not required to be engaged in a structured group activity. In the end, when I was released, it took me a while to adjust to having freedoms and an identity on the outside because in such a short time, I simply had become a patient, dehumanized and a victim of the mortification process.
According to Goffman, a total institution can be grouped in five ways, all in which produce encompassing tendencies. These tendencies enclose individuals off from the greater world symbolized with gates and locked doors and impose new social rules that disregards the individuals. Goffman suggests that total institutions strip a person of individuality and leaves them person feeling exiled and dehumanized. In a total institution, there are “house rules” individuals must follow. If these rules are met, then there is a reward, if they aren’t, then there is a punishment.
“Total institutions frequently claim to be concerned with rehabilitation, that is, with resetting the inmate’s self-regulatory mechanisms so that he will maintain the standards of the establishment of his own accord after he leaves the setting. In fact, it seems this claim is seldom realized and even when permanent alteration occurs, these changes are often not of the kind intended by the staff.”
Using Goffman’s ideas of a total institution, and how these institutions claim to want to help and prepare people after leaving it yet do the opposite, is useful to look at the American education system. The education system itself has become totalized in many ways. Take, for instance, this idea of “at-risk” youth. Children of color are often described as “at risk” in the education system. At an early age, African American children are labeled as at risk of failing, or at risk of dropping out of school. This narrative is used to identify, explain, and predict futures of African American students in urban schools based off their behavior in the classroom, appearances, the family, and more significantly, race. This study done by Ann Arnett Ferguson demonstrates the focus placed on correcting behavior of “at-risk” youth in classrooms. Ferguson describes her observation of Gary, an African American boy that been identified as “at-risk”. In the classroom, Gary raises his hand and shouts the answers to questions at the same time. The teacher reprimands him each time he does it. Finally, after multiple times Gary calls out an answer the teacher asks her other students what his punishment should be. The students suggest an array of possibilities ranging from calling his mother to washing his mouth out with soap. Gary sits in his seat silently as the teacher continues the lesson. More questions are asked and some other students raise their hands and excitedly shout out answers without being called, exactly what Gary did. However, these students are not punished and the teacher does not even notice. Gary is then singled out as “at-risk” and his behavior must be corrected through punishment, even if other White kids display the same behavioral tendencies.
The education system or rather, teachers have these perspectives towards children of color, and oftentimes imposes unfair biases. Children of color are being labeled as at-risk and treated as criminals at these crucial stages in their development. This only hinders any progress they should and can be making through unwarranted punishment as a means to “correct” their behavior and prepare them for the real world where they must learn to be obedient and docile.
(Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity. Book by Ann Arnett Ferguson)
Many people have learned to internalize the disciplinary apparatus of Institutions. Students are almost forced to become Institutionalized, in order to pass and graduate in four years or more from college. One of the most fundamental social norms in a school environment is behavior. As discussed in class, the work force will not hire anybody who recently came out of highschool. If college taught us anything, it certainly taught us self discipline. Such as getting to class on time, respecting others, behaving, Interacting in a productive social manner with our peers, learning to cooperate, composing ourselves and getting things done in a timely fashion when needed. Internalizing these institutionalizing procedures, have allowed me for the most part, to do well, in particular social environment such as jobs.
Goffman uses the term Total Institution. Goffman describes the total Institution as an institution that completely Strips a person’s old identity, to a new identity in which conforms with the Institution. In Goffman’s case, he describes the hospital as a force that restricts the patient, makes them suffer and makes them think of themselves as mentally ill. If you don’t accept the role as a mental patient, you will be judged by the institution because if you don’t think of yourself as mentally ill , In their eyes there’s no way you can better yourself and get out. This same concept can be applied to the Military. When I was in the military, I was completely stripped from my old identity. Guys had to shave their head. we completely had to get rid of our old selves, wake up early, cut any connections from outside and family. The Military is a total Institution as well as the asylum.
The purpose of the “ school to prison” is to discipline, rather than educate. Instead of constant policing, throwing poor performing students in jail, the politicians have to find productive ways in which students can learn, instead of disciplining them. In the asylums, Goffman suggest that we have to moderate our behavior and generate the thought processes of the institution on us ( accept the role of mental illness) in order to get out of the asylum. In the same way, he would describe the “ school to prison discipline” procedure as a perfect example of a total institutional mechanism. Here students need to conform to institutional behaviors and internalize the disciplinary apparatus of these school mechanisms and procedures, in order to graduate and make there way out of college.
In the U.S and several other places, the Prisons completely brainwash and strip the old identity of the inmates. To the point where they are completely dependent on the systematic apparatus and structure to continue going on with their life. They are completely manipulated and regulated by prisons. You are isolated from your family, forced to follow rules and constricted both mentally and physically. Mentally your mind is in prison and physically as well. In the same way, that mental patients in asylums were in the past.
The practices in which some schools push their students out of general education classrooms and into special education classrooms further support the practices of the school-to-prison pipeline. Some students are placed into special education classrooms based solely on behavior, behavior deemed inappropriate by an institutionalized standard such as continuously disrupting class in a manner that distracts other students or causes turbulence in a classroom procedure. By this logic, those that have behavioral issues are also low performing which also supports the removal of the student. The purpose of funneling poor-performing students into special education classes was to simultaneously rehabilitate these at-risk students towards compliance through constant discipline/routine instead of educational instruction and to improve the school’s test-based accountabilities for funding and status. These schools prioritize punishing students over educating them. Often, these students in special education classrooms with behavioral problems are suspended which causes them to fall further behind. Through this process, students that experience this either become submissive enough for the society they live in or become inmates of a total institution, which they can be further stripped and rehabilitated for society.
I feel like in any case you are institutionalized. When some people are place in jail, they are sometimes placed in confinement placing them on lockdown for 23 hours a day. This can do a lot of harm to a person. This makes them less personable. They are striped of who there once were and becomes a whole new person, sometimes going crazy. This is just like asylums where you are strip of self and become what the institution wants you to be. According to Goffman, placing people in these types of situations where you take a person out of their normal state, place them in this institution and then place them back into a normal state is like drowning a person. This is extremely true especially in the sense of jail. They place you jail then but you on probation so you can go out in the world but now you are denied the basic necessities to live like work. School is the same way. It teaches you how to be a certain way and that other ways may not be the best idea if you want to be a successful student. We become institutionalized thinking that school is the only way to have a better future which is not the case. You can be successful without any college education.
People sometimes go to institutions to get help and over time instead feel like it was all for nothing. According to Goffman, overtime patients or inmates start to feel as if they have wasted their time. You go to school for all these years to graduate and not even find a job in the field that you have a degree. This can cause you to have a sense of time wasted. Time that could have been used elsewhere.
Schools and Prisons/Asylums have a few similarities between the institutions. Despite Prisons ineffectiveness to “rehabilitate” prisoners, in a way, they are “trained” to be a worker in the workforce when or if they get out. They follow a regime everyday. They’re expected to follow the regime and obey the rules. They have no say in what they can or can’t do. Every activity is laid out for them. Their values are not taken into consideration. This is important because your routine is based on what you value. This is similar to Asylums by Goffman.
Also, Prisons/Asylums try to strip the inmate/patient of their old self and reconstruct them, so they can work within the institution. They are ready to accept instruction, submissive to the rules. As Focault would say, they are docile bodies.
In school, we are expected to be docile bodies as well. We sit quietly, and motionless in chairs, at a desk while listening to someone talk. These institutions expect people to be docile bodies working in the workforce. We are suppose to just follow the instructions and do our jobs. Go by a routine. No if, ands, or buts. Schools, Prisons and Asylums have similar attributes.
Incarceration in the United States today heavily reflects what Goffman talks about in his piece about Asylums. Prisons are total institutions just like asylums and mental hospitals that take people and try to “help” them while stripping them of their social skills and abilities. People are put into prisons and taken away from their lives to try and “fix” them and “discipline” them. The part where Goffman talks about taking a man who is drowning out of the water, teaching him to ride a bike, then putting him back in the water is similar to the situations of prisoners. People are getting taken out of their lives, being put in a setting that usually hurts the person, more than helps the person, then putting the person back into their previous lives with a new found hatred for themselves or other people. Many can’t get a job when they get released because they have a record. They get “socialized” in a way that won’t help them when they eventually return to society. Not all people who leave prison go back to their old ways or come our worse than they were before but some do, just like those who go to mental hospitals and come out of them. In both situations the person’s self-worth comes into play and their views of themselves change. They are not who they used to be and now they are just a number in a cell, completely stripped of their usual roles as a friend, or mother, or father, or brother, and especially a member of society.
Goffman’s Asylum makes some very interesting points throughout, and although at first I could not truly see a strong connection between the institutions Goffman speaks of and college there was one line in which it suddenly all clicked. The line I am referring to is this one:
“Inmates and patients lives in institutions does very little to prepare them for an outside life”.
When thinking of this I think of all the jokes and memes that have come to be within the past couple of years in regards to college institutions and how helpful and needed they truly are. Many people seem to believe that college is now something people attend because they have to rather than because they actually want to better their education. This leads to the question about whether they are actually going to get a higher education or simply lose a few years of their lives being trained in acceptable social interactions.
Much like Goffman’s point on inmates not truly being prepared for the outside world many people who attend college in the 21st Century do not believe that it has done a good job at preparing them for the “real world”. Whether it has educated them in a scholastic way is a matter that few question, but whether that knowledge is actually put to use is something else altogether. Increasing amounts of people seem to agree that while college can be good for those that want to attend it should still try to incorporate classes that could help the student build his or her life more than just within their career. Some of the classes suggested have included things like learning how to do your taxes, or how credit works; things that are needed in order to be a “successful” adult. While all of this may have began as a joke a few years ago, it has certainly turned into a more serious argument towards the higher education system.
While reading this post all I kept thinking about was the topic of solitary confinement and how United States uses that practice in a very inhumane way. How people are isolated in order to “fix” them without giving them what they need in order to becoming productive human beings. Without allowing them to develop the skills necessary in order for them to one day re enter society. Overall I thought about the incarceration system and how instead of trying to make society work as a whole, it is developed in order to divided society into those who deserve their freedom and those who don’t. This then of course ties into the fact that majority of those incarcerated are minorities and I don’t think is a coincidence that a country that was essentially built racism, they have the highest rate of incarcerations and majority of those incarcerated are minorities.
Some institutional social rules that govern social interaction in college is that your behavior reflects whatever you do in college. Students in college are shown to be more to themselves and quiet. Its like a hit or miss with finding a class where all students participate and have no problem speaking in the middle of class. From a young age, students are taught that you must go to school to get good grades so you can have a promising future. I feel like this is how I became institutionalized and learned the role of the “good student”. The good student is supposed to be on time and present every class, participates, gets all their work done on time, engages in class and private discussions with their professor, but I have seen that not all students act this way in college. There are students who still get straight A’s and are afraid to participate in class, but come to every class on time ready to learn. What I see is that students understand the fact that they have to go to class and be attentive in class along with studying to get good grades. They always told us that was the main key in school, to study.
Raising your hand is a rule that I find that is drilled in students minds from young age while in class to be called on. Although I do believe this tactic is positive and respectful to the teacher so the students are not just shouting out responses, this is a rule that has become institutionalized in our brains on how to be a good student.
According to this reading, Goffman’s investigations state that “Over time patient/inmates acquire strong feelings about their time spent there, which they tend to think of as time taken from one’s life or time wasted”. I feel like this can be connected to people who attend college. Some people believe that college and obtaining an education is important to be successful in the future, but some might think that college is a waste of time and money but they are only attending because they are forced by their parents.
This article was very informative and the pictures being shown are interesting to actually see where these patients lived. It is impressive that you actually worked in this type of surrounding, the experiences that you have faced we will never fully apprehend.
What I found interesting of Goffman’s article was the idea that asylums are made to follow the authoritarian in mental health hospitals. Many patients are stripped from their identity. The mental health patients also have to follow restrictions and destroy the old self in order to create the new self. I connected Goffman’s theory with entering college. Entering college straight out of high school can be difficult. Students learn a new level of responsibility by working and attending college. In college I also realized that you have to follow rules from the people who are the head of the department you are majoring in. Those are the people who dictate what classes you take whether you like it or not. They have certain expectations from you that includes maintaining a high GPA in order to stay in the program. I think being in college I realized your GPA defines the student you are. It doesn’t matter if you work hard or dedicate yourself. The GPA seems to be what counts the most. In college, I also think that one of the keys to be a good student is maintaining a good GPA and discipline yourself to do better. Although I don’t agree with many of the rules that college has on students, I think college teaches students skills that will help them in their future careers.
Goffman’s Asylum and the social situation of mental Patients were very astute as to understanding more of the idea of a total institution and how they are structured. One thing that really caught my attention was how he discuss how inmates and patients life in an institution does very little to prepare them for the outside world, especially inmates. We see many times people go into prisons and base on what age they are its either hard for them to get a job once they come out or they have been in prison so long that it is hard for them to adapt to the new world. The system has put so many people in jail especially black men with the idea that the type of institution that they are place in will help them fix their act or even become a better person. But the system has made it difficult for when a prisoner leaves jail for them to be able to do basic things. It’s hard for them to find a job and provide for their families or live on their own unless they are a rapper or in the entertainment business. The reason why is because of the stigma around being an x-con. They can’t vote and for those who been in prison for 20 years or more it’s hard for them to adapt to the world.
The system tries to separate those that do wrong and put them in prions which I think that there is nothing wrong with. But when many leave that institution setting it’s as if they are still within an institution setting. They have to constantly meet with a parole officer there are certain things they can’t do, places they can’t go if they are at the wrong place at the wrong time they can automatically go back into prison. A total institution follows a I believe follows a person no matter where they go, whether it is a medical issue, being in school, or being in prison.
Since I am interested in education, viewing the “School to Prison” pipeline through Goffman’s work is very useful and insightful. If we look at this social issue through Goffman’s study, we can see the unfair position students are placed in public schools. Instead of receiving the encouragement they need, students that do not meet the set expectations are stepped on. The emergence of zero tolerance policies gives students less of a chance to make it through school and graduate. The school is focused on “institutionalizing” the students; in controlling and suppressing the students. The teachers and staff are more concerned with their own requirements and not in the student’s development. There is no time for individual attention, instead students are forced to be like one another and if they do not act accordingly (to the set requirements and rules that is), they are then penalized and expelled from the schools.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union articles, “overly harsh disciplinary policies push students down the pipeline and into the juvenile justice system. Suspended and expelled children are often left unsupervised and without constructive activities; they also can easily fall behind in their coursework, leading to a greater likelihood of disengagement and drop-outs. All of these factors increase the likelihood of court involvement.” This institution is set up to criminalize the students and feed them into prisons rather than provide an education that will better their future. That is why it is more important now than ever to take a look at public schooling and make changes to the existing institution.
The following are two sources I used to learn a little more about the “School to Prison” Pipeline –
{hope this helps others who are interested in the topic}
What is the School to Prison Pipeline?
https://www.aclu.org/fact-sheet/what-school-prison-pipeline
School to Prison Pipeline Explained –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoKkasEyDOI
These are great sources. Thank you for sharing them with our class!
Just another thought – this would be a great topic for you to explore with your social media project, yes?
I was thinking that! Thank you so much for your feedback in both of my posts!