The reason sex education is available to most if not all American elementary or middle-school children is because sex matters. Not knowing how to handle oneself in sexual situations can lead to everything from injury to death, chronic hopelessness to suicide. Learning how to be safe when it comes to sex is a life-skill deemed so important that at many public schools it’s mandatory. Teenagers take driver’s education courses before getting their driver’s licenses for the very same reason, and in some places courses of this sort are likewise mandatory. So why isn’t the sort of “rights education” that would help kids learn, from an early age, what their rights and responsibilities are with respect to routine and extraordinary police encounters also mandatory? Why don’t our kids leave high school, or preferably middle school, with a thorough understanding of how our criminal justice system works (and the many ways we already know it doesn’t)?
Not knowing how to handle oneself during a police encounter, or having one’s exchanges with police officers be guided by a fear of the unknown ― often the result of a lack of knowledge about how the legal system works ― can, like the lack of age-appropriate sex education or not taking driver’s ed before getting behind the wheel of a car, lead to everything from injury to death. To be clear, bad policing is another major (and likely the primary) cause of what ails our criminal justice system at present, as is institutional racism. But whereas the route to amending longstanding police protocols and/or training procedures, or eliminating institutional racism entirely, is inaccessible to any individual parent or even most groups of parents, “rights education” is something the parents of young children can demand of their kids’ schools. Because activism that works is definitionally multilateral activism, the time for mandatory rights education in elementary, middle, and high schools ― particularly in, but by no means limited to, urban school districts ― is now, and it need not replace any other efforts presently being waged to permanently change our criminal justice system.
So what would a “rights education” class teach? To be clear, it wouldn’t be an ideational course of study ― one in which young activists teach kids how our legal system should be. There’s no doubt that the tens of thousands of courageous young activists of all colors now directly challenging the nation’s criminal justice system have a bevy of suggested reforms (e.g., body cameras, better use-of-force training, and an end to “broken windows” policing) that are smart and should immediately be instituted nationwide. But what kids need to know now, and particularly kids in over-policed neighborhoods across the country, is how things presently are ― even when how things are isn’t how they should be.
For instance, is a citizen obligated to produce identification in a given jurisdiction? In many states, the answer is yes, which means everyone in that jurisdiction able to carry some form of identification should do so. Can police officers search vehicles for no reason whatsoever? The answer is no ― but many of them do it anyway, which means that if one is in a state where marijuana is not yet legal, one should be certain never to transport weed in a car, nor believe that not consenting to a search will always postpone or end that search immediately. Should police officers use minor infractions like broken taillights and failures to stop fully at stop signs as pretextual reasons to pull a vehicle over? No, but they do, which may mean that more arduous driver education (or even “pre-driver education” for kids a few years from driving age) would be helpful for those who will be regularly driving in over-policed areas. Do police freak out when someone is carrying a sharp object, even when that object is legal to carry? Yes, which may mean education about how to inform an officer that one is carrying such an object is vital for anyone who plans to carry sharp items for protection or any other reason. What should one do during a legal or illegal stop-and-frisk? A legal or illegal traffic stop? A legal or illegal service of an arrest warrant? An attempt to search an apartment? There are preventative strategies one can use to navigate these situations, but also ― and as importantly ― ways to preserve one’s rights and one’s privacy without risking the escalation of a situation.
One argument against “rights education” is that it seems, to some, like telling future victims of government abuse that they should change their behaviors to avoid others’ misdeeds. In a very narrow way, this is true ― albeit no more than is the case when driver’s education courses teach “defensive driving,” or colleges create mechanisms to help students stay safe when walking around campus late at night. An ounce of prevention simply isn’t the same thing as capitulation, and the idea of a thorough “rights education” for our nation’s children has nothing whatsoever to do with forgiving police officers their transgressions. Rather, it has everything to do with helping those who are subjected to over-policing become street-smart about how to avoid or reduce the chance of dangerous interactions with police. But let’s be clear: rights education only makes sense if it’s coupled with efforts to systematically amend many of the criminal justice system’s practices; otherwise, it becomes merely what some fear, an apology and acclimatizing to bad behavior. Just so, if we had driver’s education classes for all young drivers but didn’t also insist on highway safety regulations from our government, much of the value of all those driver’s ed lectures and test-drives would be lost.
The best activism is simultaneously local, state, and federal; it is simultaneously self-directed and coercive, introverted and extroverted, spiritual and logistical, defined by its acts and equally known for its studied omissions. Video after video now available online shows police officers engaging in bad behavior, such as escalating situations without provocation; stopping someone or extending a stop for no reason; lying on police reports or to civilians about their actions; manipulating their dash-cams and body cameras to ensure bad behavior isn’t captured on audio or video; and so on. But there are steps we the people can take to mitigate this bad behavior until such time as other, simultaneous streams of activism solve the systemic issues in the system, including institutional racism.
It may seem self-defeating to be teaching children of all colors, walks of life, and hometowns how to speak to police officers, what happens when one is detained or arrested, what officers’ common pressure-points are, how to argue one’s own bail before a bail commissioner, and other basics of the criminal justice system ― and certainly some of what I’m discussing here would only be appropriate in classes for teenagers rather than elementary-school kids ― but at some point the question becomes not one of pride but how many more young people we as a nation can stand to see needlessly jailed or even killed. Rights education won’t save every life lost to or otherwise destroyed by bad policing, but it can save a few. And for those lucky children who find that they never need to use what they learn in the rights education courses offered throughout their K-12 education, the content of such courses nevertheless constitutes a critical lesson in civics ― and in how others elsewhere in the nation are forced to live. By the very same token, even the best sex education or driver’s education courses can only save some lives and hearts, not all. But when a harm is foreseeable, and educating kids about a harm can in some instances mitigate its effects, our responsibility as not just parents but Americans is to do all we can to protect our children.
A public defender in New England from 2000 to 2007, Seth Abramson is now an Assistant Professor at University of New Hampshire and the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University). He is also the author of six books, most recently DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).