Ending the school-to-prison pipeline is not a small task and

Hear, O children of justice, the fierce words of Jamaal Bowman, who declared: “Ending the school-to-prison pipeline is not a small task and requires detangling the myth of white superiority from our entire education system.” In these words lies both fire and lament, for he names a wound deep in the heart of society—a wound that festers when schools become gateways not to freedom but to chains, and when the falsehood of racial hierarchy poisons the very institutions meant to liberate.

The school-to-prison pipeline is the tragic path by which children, especially Black and brown children, are driven from classrooms into cells. Suspensions, expulsions, and zero-tolerance policies push them out of learning and into the streets, where the net of law enforcement awaits. Bowman reminds us that this is not accidental but born of a deeper lie: the lie of white superiority, a myth woven into laws, practices, and the unspoken biases of generations. To end the pipeline, one must not simply change policies, but uproot this lie wherever it lives—in textbooks, in classrooms, in the very expectations teachers hold for their students.

What does it mean to detangle the myth? It means to unweave a fabric long woven, thread by thread. For centuries, the belief that one race is superior justified slavery, segregation, and systemic inequity. This poison seeped into schools, where children of color were told—directly or indirectly—that they were less intelligent, less capable, less worthy of investment. To detangle is to pull apart these threads: to change curricula that glorify only European histories, to train teachers to confront their biases, to build systems of support rather than punishment for struggling students.

History gives us a witness in the life of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). When the Supreme Court struck down segregation in schools, it declared that separate was not equal. Yet even after this victory, the myth of superiority endured, shaping funding, discipline, and expectations. Decades later, the school-to-prison pipeline stands as evidence that laws alone cannot undo lies embedded in hearts and institutions. Bowman’s words carry the weight of this history: ending the pipeline is not a “small task” because it demands nothing less than the remaking of culture itself.

Consider, too, the story of Marva Collins, a teacher in Chicago who, in the 1970s, refused to accept the system’s low expectations for Black children. She opened her own school, teaching so-called “unteachable” students with love, rigor, and belief in their potential. Many of her students went on to become lawyers, doctors, and leaders. Her life is a testimony that when the myth of inferiority is rejected, children soar. But her very success reveals the injustice: why must extraordinary effort be required to give children what should be their birthright?

The meaning of Bowman’s words, then, is both revolutionary and restorative. Revolutionary, because he calls us to dismantle centuries of falsehood and oppression embedded in the education system. Restorative, because the goal is not vengeance, but healing—to create schools that nurture every child, that replace punishment with guidance, exclusion with opportunity, despair with hope. This is the vision of education as liberation, not incarceration.

Therefore, O heirs of tomorrow, take this charge: do not be silent in the face of the pipeline. Support reforms that replace zero-tolerance with restorative justice. Demand curricula that reflect the fullness of human history, not only the story of the powerful. Challenge the myth of superiority wherever it arises—in speech, in policy, in thought. And above all, see every child, regardless of color, as worthy of patience, investment, and love.

The final word is this: as Jamaal Bowman has spoken, so must we remember. To end the school-to-prison pipeline, we must strike at its root—the lie of white superiority. Only then can schools become what they were meant to be: houses of freedom, gardens of potential, sanctuaries where every child is molded not for chains, but for wings.