In The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore describes the subtle differences, and often luck, that leads to great success or abject failure later in life, specifically for at-risk urban youths growing up in poverty. This is a 2010 work of nonfiction.
The narrator has grown up to become “a Rhodes scholar, a White House Fellow, a former Army officer” while the other Wes Moore is “a drug dealer, a robber, a murderer.” Both characters grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and the fact they have the same names makes their lives and intersecting experiences rife for comparison and juxtaposition.
The narrator discusses the similarities between the public school system and the prison system. Specifically, Moore notes that public schools utilize the same tactics as prisons and seem to prime student to become prisoners through their use of lack of freedom, physical confinement, and harsh punishment.
There is also an interesting idea around the mandatory nature of education for children. This sets up a dynamic where many students in the inner city are not at school because they want to be there but rather because they have to be. As such, the schools are not set up to actually provide an education; they are designed to get the student through each day without disruption to the rest of the student body. This means teachers and administrators will “mark” problem students and treat them as discipline problems versus treating them as students seeking an education.
The connections Moore sees between schools and prisons have been noted by many, ranging from activists against the "school-to-prison pipeline" to the prominent social theorist Michel Foucault. Moore notes that schooling is a mandatory, disciplinary environment in which students are offered little freedom, physically confined, and punished if they disobey. Moore also notes that, as an institution, schools routinely fail people of color and poor people.
As activists against the school-to-prison pipeline point out, getting marked as a "troublemaker" in school can quickly put someone on the path to prison. It is not uncommon for cities to use data on behavior in school and the size of school classes to plan for increased policing and larger prisons as children in those schools become adults.
Moore is interested in inequality and what set him on a path to success and "the other" Wes Moore on a path to prison. Here it becomes clear that for some, schools are a pathway to college and success, and for others, they're a path to further poverty, crime, and imprisonment.
Interestingly, social theorist Michel Foucault famously noted that the disciplinary techniques used in schools and prisons share a common lineage. The types of techniques used to control and shape people in both environments were developed together, largely drawing on older techniques used in Christian monastic orders. While at face value, schools and prisons seem wildly different, in poor neighborhoods of color, policing and "security" measures inside of school can make it look much like a prison. Also, while reformists often speak of prisons as being about rehabilitating those inside, critics have long argued that prisons are just another way for those with power to subjugate those without social power; schooling can be used in much the same way.
In The Other Wes Moore, the author contrasts his life as a war veteran, college graduate, and Wall Street hotshot with the circumstances of his namesake: a man serving life in prison for the murder of a policeman. His comparison of public schools and prison is really about the idea that societal institutions fail many people, particularly the economically disadvantaged.
An institution, in this case, refers to the large mechanisms within a society that promote order and structure. Government is an institution. Schools, churches, prisons, the court system, and even marriage are all institutions.
Because schooling in the US is mandatory (at least until a child reaches a certain age), the author argues that most public school children get thrown into environments that are not designed to support the individual. He argues that, rather, they exist as large holding pens that kids have to pass through on their way to adulthood.
He asserts that this is particularly true in economically depressed areas where most kids are poor and of color. In this climate, "smart" or "well-behaved" children receive much less attention than the disruptive kids. This creates a scenario wherein the loud kids are marked as "trouble," a mark that is hard to wash off in adulthood.
Prison shares many of the same attributes. Prison is a legally-mandated holding pen for those who cannot conform to society's rules in some way. In systems like that, the strong overpower the weak, the loud and violent receive all the attention, and the quiet and reserved are usually victimized. He argues that, by thrusting all of these wildly different personalities into a shared space, no one is well-served.
The real point here is that institutions like public schools and the criminal justice system tend to fail poor and disadvantaged minorities in addition to associated them with a kind of brand that is difficult to remove. He sees a connection that leads from poverty-driven stress in the home to bad behavior in school, which feeds into anti-social adult behavior, ending for many in incarceration—where they act out the cycle all over again.
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