Prison Education Series: Final Edition
How and Why?
Links to the first three parts of the series are at the bottom of this post.
What is the primary lesson I learned during my brief time teaching in a maximum-security prison? Prison education is the inverse of practice outside those walls. Sometimes for the better, sometimes worse, and sometimes neither, as the environmental factors are often neutral or unpredictable.
Modality
I’m going to toe a controversial line, but here’s the reality: in-person education is the superior approach and, in a hyper-competitive education market, gives an institution an edge. This is not to say that in-person education is universally superior to “online” (whatever that means anymore), as I believe great teachers succeed in any modality; great teachers are creative and find a way.
The truth is that incarcerated students want in-person instruction; I have heard this repeatedly from students and from instructors who have been doing this for years. Incarcerated students rarely see anyone, especially in times of staffing shortages and lockdowns. They want human contact; they want to engage and have conversations, and they want this in spaces where they view other incarcerated individuals in an intellectual capacity that lies outside other existing systems of classification. Outside of the prisons, we in higher ed often use the phrase “students vote with their feet.” Trust me, most institutions don’t offer online classes because they are proven to provide better outcomes; it’s because it expands reach and that is what students want, especially those whom we used to classify as “nontraditional.” I can tell you that, right now, my institution has students living in the dorms even though most of their courses are online. Again, prison education is the inverse. In-person instruction is, in my view, the best path, as students gain far more than the curricular benefit. Simply having another person present, listening and treating them with respect, makes a profound difference in the potential futures of these students.
The Open Web
Furthermore, no real “online” option exists for incarcerated students. Why? Because they cannot access internet. Think of how libraries have changed over the last 15 to 20 years, as well as where they will be ten years from now. Think of how students conduct research and where they obtain information. They require internet access, online databases, newspaper websites and digital archives, etc. When doing a research-based assignment with my incarcerated students, we had to construct a facsimile of the research process—students generated topics, and the prison librarians literally searched for and printed out articles they thought would be relevant for the students. I understand the reasons for all of this. Yes, incarcerated students can take online classes in sealed-off Learning Management Systems or even simply lectures over Zoom. But to truly succeed in online/hybrid/digital environments, the open web and information literacy are one of the contemporary world’s primary points of tension, and thus a rich source of learning. Given the lack of web access for incarcerated students, any purely online mode of education is going to be inferior to what it really could be. (There’s a reason rural broadband initiatives are so important.)
Finally, why?
This is the most difficult question of all, as it arrives with great controversy and passion. I can see many people reading this series, or even just hearing the phrase “prison education” and saying, No, that’s not why they are there. Such people should not have access to privileges such as teachers, books, classes, etc. Prison is prison. If you have done terrible things, you deserve punishment, not reward.
It may surprise you that I am not unsympathetic to this mindset. It is true that an incarcerated student may have done something terrible, harmed others, and sent a tragic, permanent, destructive wave through the lives of people we don’t know. There are also many incarcerated students who find themselves behind bars for lesser offenses, but enough to require their presence at a maximum-security facility. Would I want someone who had hurt me or someone in my family taking classes or earning a degree while serving their sentence? In trying to imagine my personal response, the answer is likely “no.”
This is why we have an impartial justice system. This is why judgement comes from judges and juries, not the involved parties. As an educator walking into a prison to teach a course, the first reality I accepted without question was these individuals have already been judged. It is not my place to judge them again. As part of that pact, I never once looked up any of my students or inquired of them, or anyone else, why they were incarcerated. (Victim’s services groups play a significant, positive role in ensuring whether images or work of specific students can ever be made public.) I knew that, if I were personally affected, I would feel differently, but that is also why I was there. I am a state employee who serves the people of Wisconsin. Wisconsin says it wants prison education because education is crucial to rehabilitation. So, in some respects, I do this because my state has asked me to.
Educators have long put themselves at risk and gone great lengths to bring education’s light to the people who most need it. For example, we can look at what it means for females to receive education under Taliban rule; we can consult our own history and what it meant to teach a slave to read. We must also acknowledge the risk all educators take in the era of mass shootings, with schools often targeted—as I write this, today is my daughters’ first day of the new school year. I thank their teachers for being there for them.
In our current era, I do think we’ve developed an undeserved comfort with who teachers are and what they do—it’s no secret that American teachers are often the objects of political and social derision. That is uncomfortable, so much so that people leave the profession, but this is a calling with a long history, one that includes risk and adversity. If you carry the light, you must be willing to, at times, go into the dark. Prison education is a noble and complicated example of this pursuit.
Series links: