My experience in studying Chicago’s schools leads me to agree with Devine’s contention that schools’ reliance on guards, police, and sophisticated equipment conveys an impression that these spaces are out of control. In this “new panopticon” of urban education, the gaze of supervision is no longer omnipotent.62 Instead, teachers’ preoccupation with students’ minds is counterbalanced by the use of security forces to police the bodies of inner-city students via physical pat-downs, metal detector scans, and more.63 But perhaps more to the point, most of these interventions do not leave the
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