So apparently I missed this article several months ago but it is worth blogging about today. Following on my theme of zero tolerance policies run amok in U.S. school, we are apparently still using “seclusion rooms” for students.

The following USA Today article highlights the story of 13 year old Jonathan King:

Don King didn’t have a clue his son, Jonathan, was being put in a seclusion cell at school for hours because of bad behavior — until the 13-year-old hanged himself while in “time out.”

Now, King and his wife, Tina, are pushing state education officials to pass a policy banning the use of solitary confinement in Georgia schools, which they say led directly to their son’s death in 2004.

Apparently six years after Jonathan King’s suicide, Georgia still has no official guidelines for subjecting students to seclusion or restraint — and neither do many other states according to the article. Examples like this are the reason that I started this blog. Prison culture permeates ALL aspects of American society. Our schools are being run in many cities and states just like jails and prisons. Putting a 13 year old in a seclusion room for hours at a time while he is supposed to be getting an education is inhumane and straight up barbaric.