Review of Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Abstract

This review of Bettina Love’s (2019) We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom places the book within the context of the school/prison nexus and the contemporary American prison abolition movement. It offers a summary of Love’s main arguments with suggestions for further reading, highlights chapters that could stand alone in course syllabi, and suggests uses for the text in teacher education, research, and the K-12 classroom. It also provides academic, historical, and theoretical connections to Love’s concept of abolitionist teaching. Ultimately, I propose the expansion and application of her work by suggesting that while Love is inspired by prison abolitionists, teachers must move further towards pragmatic connections to abolition in the classroom.

Keywords

• abolition
• school/prison nexus
• school to prison pipeline