Open Collections

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that school expulsion, social segregation, and capital punishment are three forms of expulsion that can impact current and future freedoms of the person expelled. The dehumanization and miseducation that can happen through various experiences of expulsion reveal freedom as a problem. I understand freedom as the existential experience of being a person in the world where one navigates between unfreedoms and freedoms within oneself, society, and life. Freedom includes a person’s capacity or power to: 1) decide for oneself and pursue one’s purpose rather than being forced to comply; 2) think and act for oneself in ways that align with one’s desires and intentions; and 3) understand the world as it is presented and imagine how things could be different. Conversely, expulsions may act against and limit these dimensions of freedom in that a person is forced to leave a school, a particular part of society, or life itself. Freedom becomes a significant concern for Black people who are disproportionately expelled within North America and internationally. Through the field of philosophy of education, I offer a descriptive analysis to showcase the imagery and evidence for how expulsion also entails an existential component, as it prompts the issue of freedom to appear more distinct. I then defend a normative philosophical claim which emerges from my descriptive analysis: If expulsion is also an existential problem, then education should take up a responsibility of an abolitionary ethic of love. An abolitionary ethic of love is in response to life-denying punitive models and toward life-affirming education and societies. My intent here is to show how three example forms of expulsion (from school, society, and life) can infringe on and complicate the freedom of the person expelled.