Wendell & Wild: An Indictment of the School-to-Prison Pipeline with a Banging Black Punk Soundtrack

school desk in a prison cell

Wendell & Wild” has a Black punk soundtrack, a Black girl protagonist with a transgender friend, a critique of the school-to-prison pipeline, and Key & Peele.

The official playlist is full of Black and Queer Punk. It’s a banger.

Spoiler Alert: The following pullquote is revealed later in the movie and is spoiler-ish.

We make it impossible for them to succeed there, and when they fail, our new prison will be waiting with open arms.

—The villains revealing their evil school-to-prison plan in Wendell & Wild

We have turned classrooms into a hell for neurodivergence.

We have survivors of the school-to-prison pipeline in our community. Neurodivergent and disabled people are disproportionately fed to the pipeline.

Stimpunk Feral the Earthworm distills it well.

Hey, you ever stop to think that maybe we're all different?
Or that you can't just throw every student into the same system
Just examine resources and where they're placin' em
I'm just saying there's different students out there facing some pain
It's completely unfair to expect that they would behave the same
But go ahead, make it harder for one and watch them play the game

-- Imaginary Numbers

Published by Ryan Boren

#ActuallyAutistic retired technologist turned wannabe-sociologist. Equity literate education, respectfully connected parenting, passion-based learning, indie ed-tech, neurodiversity, social model of disability, design for real life, inclusion, open web, open source. he/they

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