Wow -- I'm impressed with the thoughtful comments in this discussion
already!
 
On the question about college for inmates -- this is a dynamic topic and
there is much to be said.  First, there are still college programs in
prisons.  A recent Ford Foundation supported study by the Institute for
Higher Education Policy documented the extent of postsecondary education in
prisons -- and there are more programs out there than many had thought
(myself included).  This is a well documented and very forward thinking
publication which needs to be seen by more people.   ("Learning to Reduce
Recidivism, A 50 State analysis of postsecondary correctional education
policy," November 2005,
<http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&ty
peID=906&itemID=14017>
http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&typ
eID=906&itemID=14017 )
 
There is still State money being invested in postsecondary education in a
number of States, federal funds are being spent on postsecondary education
in the Bureau of Prisons, and our Department provides more than $20 million
annually for postsecondary State prisoner education in the Grants to States
for Workplace and Community Transition Training for Incarcerated Youth
Offenders Program.
<http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html>
http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html   In a number of
States, postsecondary education seems to be quite an issue -- still to be
settled at a policy level.  New York comes to mind.  California seems very
recently to have settled this issue at a policy level and is now developing
and implementing new partnerships with colleges.  
 
Will inmates become eligible for Pell grants again at some time in the
future?  That is for the lawmakers to decide, but it seems to be an issue
that never goes away.  CURE is one national organization that has worked
hard year after year on this issue.
http://www.curenational.org/new/index.html  The Open Society Institute has
also shown an ongoing interest.  
 
John Linton
 

-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of John Gordon
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 1:35 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 208] Re: Comment on discussion of
"re-entryeducation"for ex-offenders


Thanks to Taylor Stoehr for his thought-provoking piece. I think we have
much to learn from such work. I'd like to hear more.
 
I work at the Fortune Society, a 39 year old organization in New York City
dedicated to (1) advocating for prison and criminal justice reform and (2)
working with people after they leave prison. At Fortune, education is just
one of a wide array of programs people coming out of prison can participate
in. Even though most people who come to us do not have a high school
diploma, education is usually not the first thing on their minds. The vast
majority need a job and many are either homeless or one step from it. In
addition, most people are dealing with a range of parole and probation
mandates like substance abuse treatment and anger management. 
 
Approximately 250 people participate in our Education program each year; in
the last few years, the percentage of younger students and particularly of
people mandated to one of Fortune's Alternative to Incarceration program has
grown dramatically. I think our underlying philosophy has much in common
with the program described by Taylor Stoehr - we develop curriculum around
the needs and issues brought to the class by the students themselves.
However, a number of factors have undermined our ability to maintain that
focus on content:

*	

	The sheer numbers of people coming through our doors every year has
stretched our resources. We have struggled to keep up with the demand.
Recently we have restructured our program so that it serves fewer people,
but more intensively.
*	

	We are serving increasing numbers of court mandated students, many
of whom really don't want to be in class. We have worked hard to develop a
curriculum that honors their right and need to make autonomous decisions
about the role of education in their lives and at the same time to insist on
the integrity of the process in the classroom.  
*	

	Perhaps though, the biggest obstacle has been the fact that we are
caught up in the National Reporting System and its focus on educational gain
as defined by test scores. The pressure to meet state targets, lumped
together indiscriminately as we are with every other program in the state,
has produced enormous pressure to test, test, test. This has not been all
bad as it has led us to look closely at what we are doing and think about
how we can do it better. But the narrow focus on test scores has made it
difficult to shape the program around the real and individual needs of the
students.

Perhaps in a later post, I can address some other issues, but I did want to
pose one question:  Given that the elimination of Pell Grants for prisoners
has virtually ended the possibility of going to college while in prison,
what do the panelists think is the importance of and possibility of
reinstating that right? Here at Fortune where many of the staff have been
incarcerated themselves, the value and significance of college level work in
prison is a given. Many of the staff members in the leadership of the agency
got their degrees (or at least started them) while in prison. Obviously, the
college degree, or college level coursework, opens up job possibilities for
people once they're out. But it also contributes to the development of
leadership skills that will allow former prisoners to come back to their
communities and play critical roles in shaping collective responses to the
problems those communities are facing.
 
john gordon
The Fortune Society 
 
While we 

  _____  

From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of Taylor Stoehr
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 8:38 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 205] Comment on discussion of "re-entry
education"for ex-offenders



I work in a Massachusetts program for probationers called Changing Lives
Through Literature.  (See our website: cltl at umassd.edu )  Started in 1991 in
a single court, it has spread to a number of jurisdictions in Massachusetts
and to six other states.  I can speak for the men's program in Dorchester,
the busiest criminal court in the state, where we have the experience of a
dozen years - perhaps 250 graduates of our ten-week program offered every
semester.  We are currently involved in a study of recidivism in five
jurisdictions, but the results will not be available for quite some time.
For the moment, I can say that the probationers themselves believe that they
change during this short period of intense focus on a few texts, and a set
of concerns that are central in their lives.  Our primary text is Frederick
Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, which serves as the
starting point for discussion of problems faced by the students themselves -
poverty and racism, the struggle for social  justice, family breakdown, the
weakening of community bonds and thinning out of spiritual sustenance.
Short supplementary readings by other authors - black and white, American
and foreign, contemporary and classic - clarify issues Douglass raises by
putting them in a broader context, and a writing assignment helps us focus
on their relevance today.  For example, after reading how Douglass describes
his childhood, and how Malcolm X, Bill Russell, Maxim Gorky, or Leo Tolstoy
describe theirs, students are asked to state their own opinion of what is
necessary for a "normal" childhood, and who has the responsibility to
provide it.  What was your childhood like?  What kind of a father do you
want to be?  Those are the implied questions.  We also ask how a man like
Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X finds himself.  "Where do people get their
courage, self-esteem, and righteousness?"

With men like those I work with, it's probably better to concentrate on the
literacy skills they already possess - a complicated mix of street smarts
and a colloquial eloquence among friends and family - than to imagine that
we are going to "improve" their reading, writing, or talking.  To speak in
their own voices in a public setting like our classroom, where we talk about
serious issues that affect their lives, is the best training in literacy we
can offer them.  

One of our aims is to demystify the whole realm of social control,
schooling, and literacy.  All their lives our students have been told they
are incompetent readers and writers, and this tends to make them so.  But
the incompetence is superficial in most cases.  Their speech skills are
usually more than adequate, and often superb.  In fact, their failure in
school has protected them from certain kinds of glibness and beating about
the bush.  

All students, including ours, have the right to success in a truly
democratic classroom - not just an opportunity to learn, but active exercise
of language, taste, and ethics, in order to explore their own individual
powers and ideals in relation to a growing sense of how others speak and
judge and evaluate.  "Success" means both discovering and making standards,
rather than merely living up to them.  "Failure" means being left out of the
most essential aspects of civic life.  Often the schools fail to do this
important work, through a misguided notion of what kind of education is
appropriate in an egalitarian society.  The men we meet in Changing Lives
typically think of themselves as failures.  From their earliest experiences
in schooling to the regimen of incarceration and probation, they have
stubbornly resisted demands and admonishments, have been labeled
incorrigible, and have little or no sense of what it might mean to be part
of a democratic forum deciding matters of concern for their own lives.  We
want to establish such a classroom, in which no one will be left out.

Our aim is to give each man a chance to think better of himself, while
simultaneously dispelling the illusion that success in school is the only
route to respectability.  We aren't trying to get people back on the
educational track, but to let them judge for themselves what it would mean
to return to school, or to decide not to go that route, a question that asks
them to assess their own lives - Who am I, really, and what kind of future
do I want for myself?

 

Taylor Stoehr, English Department

University of Massachusetts - Boston

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