The Caged Bird Sings

I came across an interesting article today about inmates from Ofek Prison learning about the Holocaust and taking tours of Holocaust museums. This article caught my interest for two reasons. One reason is that it discusses what inmates can learn from studying subjects such as history. The other reason is the idea of taking prisoners on field trips.

From the few articles and blogs that I’ve read, it seems like a lot of prison education programs focus on studying for high school equivalency certificates or basic law. The idea behind studying these subjects seems to be that these are the essentials that the prisoners will need to enter society. There is not denying the importance of studying such subjects, but I feel there can also be value found in studying topics such as history. The article supports this idea when it states:

‘”Even in suffering one can hang in there and remain human,” says Folman-Raban. “It’s important for me to convey that to prisoners, to give them strength, hope and understanding that even from the worst situations they can emerge and build a new life.”

The idea of studying the Holocaust to give prisoners the feeling that they can fight through their struggles is an intriguing one. Some may say that knowledge of the Holocaust is not essential, and thus funding should not be spent on educating prisoners about it. But clearly there is value in studying history, especially an event as important as the Holocaust. There are certain “life lessons” which can be taken from studying history, as Folman-Raban notes above. One of the prisoners also expressed such an interest in learning valuable lessons from studying history when he said, “I was glad of the opportunity to study the Holocaust. Going into prison this time was the end of the world for me. This project has exposed me to the horrors of war and I’ve learned a lot about survival and the spiritual fortitude that helps you through the hard times,”

The other topic I wanted to address with this article is taking prisoners on field trips. Obviously the idea of driving prisoners around town, unrestrained as they were in this instance, will not bode well for certain people. The possibility of a breakout is raised and there are a lot of innocent people around if something were to go wrong. Such fears were expressed in this article.

“On November 2006 the first group of inmates from Ofek Prison visited the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum. “Two days earlier Benny Sela escaped from the Tel Aviv court parking lot and we almost canceled the tour,” Sabiti says.”

However, this article also discusses the benefits of allowing the prisoners to walk around the museum in regular clothes and no handcuffs.

“‘There were fears that prisoners might try to escape and that the project would be slammed, but I insisted on going through with it and in taking the prisoners to the museum without handcuffs or prison uniforms. I wanted to give them a feeling of freedom for one day and to enrich their knowledge.’

“After hearing Folman-Raban’s story, the prisoners, dressed in jeans and white T-shirts, are taken through the museum with a guide.

“‘Today they are very curious, excited, attentive and well-mannered,’ says Sigal Nir, Tzalmon Prison’s education officer, watching the convicts on a break outside the museum.”

As this article shows, allowing inmates a certain amount of freedom along with their educational experience can enhance their learning and give them some confidence. If the inmates were to walk around in uniforms and handcuffs, the educational experience would probably feel more like punishment than an opportunity.

I think that such “field trip” programs to study something other than law, personal finance, and high school equivalency can be greatly beneficial for inmates, as this article shows.

-Mark

“Prisoners escape for one day to learn about the Holocaust”
By Vered Lee, Haaretz Correspondent
Full article available at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948101.html

Today my Google Reader account (the glorious device that it is) delivered an interesting story from the Cincinnati Enquirer. The article is entitled “In jail, learning counts,” and it deals with inmates passing the GED exam at the Hamilton County jail. There is a lot dealing with the confidence that inmates gain by having their GED and the ways that their education prepares them for going back into society. But the most interesting part of this articles was when it said:

     “The program is unique among Ohio jail-based programs in that it uses full-time teachers and is operated by the sheriff’s office rather than an outside agency.”

According to the article, the Hamilton County jail has a very high rate of success when it comes to passing the GED (83%), and part of the reason is the unique structure of the program. Part of that uniqueness, as is said in the quote above, is that the program uses full-time teachers.

This was of great interest to me, living in an area of the country that has a surplus of teachers and very few teaching positions, because it implies a whole new source of teaching positions which isn’t often discussed. Helping prison/jail inmates pass their GED would be a very rewarding experience for a number of teachers. And given the numbers of people entering the jail system, it seems as if there would be a great need for teachers in such positions.

I’m not familiar with how many prison and jail programs already have such programs, but based on this article they seem to be fairly rare. All of this has got me thinking of how beneficial implanting more of these programs would be for the education community as a whole. There would be more job opportunities for teachers, and a large community would be receiving a desperately needed education. Perhaps there could even be some sort of reward program where student loans could be lessened if one chose to teach in a jail or prison. Of course, with the idea of increasing such programs comes the problem of increasing taxes. But that’s a whole different problem.

I could imagine a number of teacher certified college graduates being wary of teaching in a jail of prison. Such students are dealing with many more issues than your average high school student. But this article addressed such fears.

     “There are challenges, teachers said. Some students have deep physical or emotional wounds. Some have learning disabilities. And they’ve all made some mistakes.
‘We know where we’re at; we’re not naive and think they’re all sweet angels,’ said teacher Cassandra Jeter. But sometimes it provides some humor, she said, smiling as she recalled how a student offered to teach her how to shoplift as thanks for the instruction.
‘I always say if I get locked in here (the classroom) I’ll just call my students to get me out!’ Jeter joked.
The teachers, though, look at the students as humans, not criminals.
‘The ones you see in the paper and in mug shots are completely different people,’ Jeter said.”

Clearly teaching in jails and prisons can be a highly rewarding job opportunity. I think that education programs should discuss such jobs as real possibilities and possibly even offer courses dealing with teaching in such environments. Of course, that is all contingent on how many of these programs exist or will be formed, but it is an idea worth looking into.

The whole article can be found here.

I have decided to change my blog topic for this semester. Originally I was going to write about literature in schools, specifically required reading lists. However, I began to find that while this topic is of great interest to me, there isn’t necessarily a lot of news worthy things happening with it. So I’m going to write about something that is also of great interest to me and will hopefully have more material to deal with.

My new topic is on Prison Education Programs, with a specific interest in the Reading Programs. My interest in this topic comes from both professional interest and personal experience. I had never really thought about Prison Reading Programs until I was trying to get rid of some of my old books and my mom’s friend asked if she could have them for her prison library program. At the time this sparked a bit of interest. I felt good being able to contribute literature that I enjoyed to those who may not otherwise encounter it.
My interest grew even stronger once my cousin was sentenced to a year in jail. My aunts were sending him crossword puzzles and riddles to give him something to keep his mind busy, and observing my aunts help my cousin made me want to help as well. So I got to thinking about how my interests and strengths could benefit my cousin. I remembered how I had donated my old books earlier and decided to send my cousin different kinds of literature to keep him busy. I sent poems, a few of my favorite classics (e.g. Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies), and some new popular fiction. Eventually he wrote me back saying how much he appreciated what I sent him, giving me the feeling that I had both helped him through his sentence and given him a boost of confidence when it somes to reading.
Professionally, prison library programs interest me because I can see it as a real possibility of something I may partake in later in life (whether I get paid or am a volunteer). I truly believe that people can better themselves by exploring literature. Whether it is by improving their reading and writing skills in general or boosting their confidence with a knowledge of academia that they may not have been previously exposed to.
I also really enjoy the scene in “The Shawshank Redemption” when Andy improves to the prison library…

For this topic I am still subscribing to the New York Times’ and The LA Times’ education RSS feed. These publications seem to have more significance with my new topic, since they are based in larger metropolitan areas that may have more prison topics discussed. I have also subscribed to Google news searches for “prison reading program,” “prison library,” and “prison education.” Hopefully this will give me a broad enough search to find topics to write on. I was also very lucky to stumble across a blog from an actual prison librarian at http://prisonlibrarian.blogspot.com/

Hello,

The topic for my blog is literature in schools with a focus on required reading lists. I chose this topic based on my previous experience as a student and my future goals of being an English teacher. As a student, I was always annoyed by the idea of required reading (e.g. Of Mice and Men, The Scarlet Letter, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I always thought that it greatly limited the students exposure to the vast world of literature just because someone decided that these novels were more important than all of the others. Not only does this topic relate to the literature portion of “language arts,” it also relates to the writing portion. Because required reading lists never change, it is difficult to develop new and meaningful writing topics based around the required texts (How much can a student write about what the green light symbolizes in The Great Gatsby?). Through the research involved with this blog I hope to explore ways to either incorporate other works of literature into the curriculum or to create meaningful reading and writing assignments based on required literature.

I have subscribed to the following RSS feeds to help me in my blogging…

New York Times - Education section
LA Times - Education section
A Google search for “school reading list”
The Kids Lit blog (http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/)

I chose the New York Times and LA Times because they were the only major news sites where I could find an RSS feed specifically for education, but I intend to add to this list as I find more publications that didn’t come to mind as readily. The blog feed is from a librarian and discusses the books kids could/should be reading and had a few posts on banned books (another point of interest in my topic).

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