The Future of Education

This arts-based inquiry examines the unseen consequences of exclusionary practices affecting Black students in the urban community of Flint, Michigan. Using the theorizations of BlackCrit (Dumas & ross, 2016) and structural violence (Galtung, 1969), this study considers how school disciplinary practices exacerbate the structural violence the youth experience from within the schoolhouse and beyond. The current literature has documented the material consequences of exclusion, such as missed instructional time and increased contact with the judicial system. Yet the immaterial effects on Black students' self-concept and sense of belonging remain insufficiently explored. Black students who had been previously suspended were recruited through a local community center to participate in workshops, where they created creative expression pieces in response to prompts asking how they believed their schools perceived them and how they perceived themselves since their suspensions. Through semiotic and narrative analysis, the findings reveal diametric conceptions between how students believe their educators and educational systems perceive them and how they view themselves. Students perceive that education proxies view them as inherently incapable, necessarily surveilled, and obstinate troublemakers. Paradoxically, the participants' self-perceptions cast them as capable, communal, and determined. Beyond data acquisition, the artwork functions as resistance, asserting students’ humanity and freedom dreams. This study could be instructive for teacher preparation programs, advance pedagogical considerations, and empower youth voices.