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ABSTRACT
Prison educators “stand at the crossroads of liberation and incarceration.” They promote education, which can be a tool of personal freedom, in a setting designed to oppress and control. What practices help them accomplish the objectives of liberatory learning? This essay traces the philosophical and relational premises that I believe are essential for educators teaching in prisons. It begins with a basic characterization of prison education in contemporary settings. The essay then examines the pedagogies of several prison educators who, despite their different disciplines and perspectives, emphasize the importance of identity, relational dynamics, and participatory learning. Finally, the essay offers recommendations for thinking through a learner-centered approach to pedagogical design that can help incarcerated students better understand their lives and claim their voices under oppressive conditions.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this essay, as well as Johanna Foster of Monmouth University, for reviews of an earlier draft. I also thank the students in my writing class at New Jersey State Prison for their insights and contributions to my understanding of prison pedagogy.
Notes
1 Steven Klein et al., Correctional Education: Assessing the Status of Prison Programs and Information Needs (Berkeley, CA: MPR Associates, 2004), 1.
2 Stephanie Ewert, Bryan L. Sykes, and Becky Pettit, “The Degree of Disadvantage: Incarceration and Inequality in Education,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, no. 1 (2014): 34.
3 Leland J. Carver and Laura M. Harrison, “Democracy and the Challenges of Correctional Education,” Journal of Correctional Education 67, no. 1 (2016): 11.
4 Stephen Steurer et al., “The Top-Nine Reasons to Increase Correctional Education Programs,” Corrections Today 72, no. 4 (2010): 42; Lois Davis et al., How Effective Is Correctional Education, and Where Do We Go from Here? The Results of a Comprehensive Evaluation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014), 81.
5 Jerry Flores, “A Race Conscious Pedagogy: Correctional Educators and Creative Resistance inside California Juvenile Detention Facilities,” Association of Mexican-American Educators Open Issue 9, no. 2 (2015): 18–30; “Jail Pedagogy: Liberatory Education inside a California Juvenile Detention Facility,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 17, no. 4 (2012): 286–300; Lori Pompa, “Service-Learning as Crucible: Reflections on Immersion, Context, Power, and Transformation,” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 9, no. 1 (2002): 67–76.
6 Robert Scott, “Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison,” The Radical Teacher 95 (2013): 23.
7 Erin L. Castro and Michael Brawn, “Critiquing Critical Pedagogies inside the Prison Classroom: A Dialogue between Student and Teacher,” Harvard Educational Review 87, no. 1 (2017): 101.
8 For example, see Kathy Boudin, “Participatory Literacy Education behind Bars: AIDS Opens the Door,” Harvard Educational Review 63, no. 2 (1993): 207–32; Tony Gaskew, “Developing a Prison Education Pedagogy,” New Directions for Community Colleges 2015, no. 170 (2015): 67–78; Stephen John Hartnett, Jennifer K. Wood, and Bryan McCann, “Turning Silence into Speech and Action: Prison Activism and the Pedagogy of Empowered Citizenship,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8, no. 4 (2011): 331–52; Nathaniel B. D. Moore, “The Transformative Power of Sankofa: Teaching African History inside San Quentin State Prison,” New Directions for Community Colleges 2015, no. 170 (2015): 57–65; Pompa, “Service-Learning as Crucible”; Kristin Bervig Valentine, “‘If the Guards Only Knew’: Communication Education for Women in Prison,” Women’s Studies in Communication 21, no. 2 (1998): 238–43; Eleanor Novek, “Jail Pedagogies: Teaching and Trust in a Maximum-Security Men’s Prison,” Dialogues in Social Justice 2, no. 2 (2017): 31–51.
9 Carver and Harrison, “Democracy and the Challenges,” 13.
10 Castro and Brawn, “Critiquing Critical Pedagogies inside the Prison Classroom,” 100.
11 Davis et al., How Effective Is Correctional Education? 4.
12 Michelle Fine et al., Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum-Security Prison. Effects on Women in Prison, the Prison Environment, Reincarceration Rates and Post-Release Outcomes (New York: City University of New York, Graduate School and University Center, 2001), 5.
13 Jim Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” in Schooling in a “Total Institution”: Critical Perspectives on Prison Education, ed. Howard S. Davidson (Westport, CN: Bergin & Garvey, 1995), 26.
14 Charles B. A. Ubah and Robert L. Robinson, “A Grounded Look at the Debate over Prison-Based Education: Optimistic Theory Versus Pessimistic Worldview,” The Prison Journal 83, no. 2 (2003): 122.
15 Ibid., 124.
16 Ellen Wexler, “Prisoners to Get ‘Second Chance Pell,’” Inside Higher Ed, June 24, 2016, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/24/us-expands-pell-grant-program-12000-prison. A 2016 pilot program created by the Obama Administration explored the resumption of Pell Grants for selected inmates at certain institutions of higher education. The survival of the program is doubtful under the current administration.
17 Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” 26.
18 Davis et al., How Effective Is Correctional Education? 4.
19 Monica Frolander-Ulf and Michael D. Yates, “Teaching in Prison,” Monthly Review 53, no. 3 (2005): 115.
20 Bruce Western, Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, Education and Incarceration (Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 2003), 6.
21 Davis et al., How Effective Is Correctional Education? 5.
22 Matthew R. Durose, Alexia D. Cooper, and Howard N. Snyder, Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics, 2014). This five-year study reported that 67.8% of prisoners are rearrested within three years after their release and 76.6% are rearrested within five years, but it found that recidivism rates decrease dramatically when prisoners participate in education programs. The influential RAND study cited earlier found that prisoners who participated in any type of correctional education programs had a 43% lower chance of returning to prison after release than those who did not (Davis et al., How Effective Is Correctional Education?). See also Ubah and Robinson, “A Grounded Look at the Debate,” 115.
23 Hartnett, Wood, and McCann, “Turning Silence into Speech and Action,” 336; James Kilgore, “Bringing Freire behind the Walls: The Perils and Pluses of Critical Pedagogy in Prison Education,” The Radical Teacher 90 (2011): 60; Lora Bex Lempert, Suzanne Bergeron, and Maureen Linker, “Negotiating the Politics of Space: Teaching Women’s Studies in a Women’s Prison,” NWSA Journal 17, no. 2 (2005): 202; Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” 28; Simone Weil Davis with Bruce Michaels, “Ripping Off Some Room for People to ‘Breathe Together’: Peer-to-Peer Education in Prison,” Social Justice 42, no. 2 (2015): 151; Boudin, “Participatory Literacy Education behind Bars,” 228.
24 Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” 25.
25 Novek, “Jail Pedagogies,” 45.
26 Dwight Conquergood, “Between Rigor and Relevance: Rethinking Applied Communication,” in Applied Communication in the 21st Century, ed. Kenneth N. Cissna (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995), 85.
27 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 63.
28 Angela Rogensues, “An Educator’s Dilemma,” Adult Learning 17, no. 1–4 (2006): 32.
29 Ibid., 31.
30 Lisa Kort-Butler and Sarah Malone, “Citizen Volunteers in Prison: Bringing the Outside in, Taking the Inside out,” Journal of Crime and Justice 38, no. 4 (2015): 518.
31 Atif Rafay, “An ‘Impossible Profession’? The Radical University in Prison,” The Radical Teacher 95 (2013): 16.
32 Castro and Brawn, “Critiquing Critical Pedagogies inside the Prison Classroom,” 118.
33 Dylan Rodriguez, “The Disorientation of the Teaching Act: Abolition as Pedagogical Position,” The Radical Teacher 88 (2010): 8.
34 Research has shown that officers tend to view instructors with contempt, believing that they are overly empathetic and that they pose a security risk to the institution. Flores, “A Race Conscious Pedagogy,” 20.
35 Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” 25.
36 Scott, “Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison,” 26.
37 Pompa, “Service-Learning as Crucible,” 68.
38 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1970), 81.
39 Ibid., 91.
40 Flores, “Jail Pedagogy,” 287.
41 Rogensues, “An Educator’s Dilemma,” 31.
42 Scott, “Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison,” 28 original emphasis.
43 Moore, “The Transformative Power of Sankofa,” 57.
44 Gaskew, “Developing a Prison Education Pedagogy,” 71.
45 Flores, “A Race Conscious Pedagogy,” 25.
46 Valentine, “‘If the Guards Only Knew,’” 242.
47 Boudin, “Participatory Literacy Education behind Bars,” 225.
48 Aislinn O’Donnell, “Curriculum as Conversation: Vulnerability, Violence, and Pedagogy in Prison: Curriculum as Conversation,” Educational Theory 65, no. 4 (2015): 488.
49 Thomas, “The Ironies of Prison Education,” 39.
50 Steurer et al., “The Top-Nine Reasons to Increase Correctional Education Programs.”
51 Jane Maher, “Teaching Academic Writing in a Maximum Security Women’s Prison,” New Directions for Community Colleges 2015, no. 170 (2015): 82. See also Beth Hatt-Echeverria, “Chapter Fifteen: Prison Perspectives on Pedagogy,” Counterpoints 218 (2003): 241.
52 Castro and Brawn, “Critiquing Critical Pedagogies inside the Prison Classroom,” 117.
53 James Kilgore, “Is Another Pedagogical World Possible? Teaching Globalization to My Fellow Prisoners,” The Radical Teacher 95 (2013): 41.
54 Gaskew, “Developing a Prison Education Pedagogy,” 76.
55 Castro and Brawn, “Critiquing Critical Pedagogies inside the Prison Classroom,” 100.
56 Sabrina Germain, “Prison-Based Education and Its New Pedagogical Perspective,” Journal of Criminal Justice Education 25, no. 2 (2014): 200.