Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison
2013; University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; Issue: 95 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/radicalteacher.95.0022
ISSN1941-0832
Autores Tópico(s)Social Work Education and Practice
Resumo22 Introduction I a teacher who has just had a good teaching experience. Looking back at a semester of work, it seems clear that the course affected the language, thoughts, and actions of the students. What is more, the intellectual universe of the teacher was challenged at times, blurring the line between “teacher” and “student.” Everyone in the class had an opportunity to learn something and to share something that the others did not know. While all participants may not have come to the same conclusions, they shared challenges and changes of mind that could not be anticipated when the course first started. Add to the surprise that the course was taught in a prison. I have become accustomed to hearing teachers say, “Wow— what an amazing class—I had no idea that was possible in prison” after their first experience teaching on the inside. This is good news for teachers in a world in which education is considered by most non-academics to be a bore (OECD 2000). It also clashes with the common image of prisons as places of mindless drudgery and decay. I am skeptical of the “good classroom experience” in prison teaching; this essay sets out to provide interrogations and explanations of this phenomenon. My perspective on prison teaching draws upon five years of organizing college-in-prison programs in Illinois. Over the past five years, mostly while in graduate school, I helped organize a new college-in-prison program at the University of Illinois. The design of the program was informed by several meetings with college-in-prison organizers from around the country.1 Once the program was up and running, I organized a national conference on higher education in prison in 2010.2 The conversation continued during the following year at a conference hosted at the University of Washington in 2011. Today, I teach college classes in an Illinois prison through a university and a community college. These experiences with teaching in prison, and my critical reading of mass incarceration in the United States, inform the theoretical assumptions upon which my ideas rest. The central premise of this paper is that many types of teacher, including those who are critical of prison itself, can have positive experiences teaching on the inside. This paper is written for collegelevel instructors who, I assume, hold no malice toward incarcerated students (an Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison
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