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Articles Conference Reviews |
G.24 Education Behind BarsG.24 Education Behind Bars In session G.24, Joseph Lockard and Sherry Robertson explored the urgent question of “who has a right to education.” Both presentations brought new insights to audience members unfamiliar with prison teaching as well as to veteran prison teachers. As someone who has been involved with prison education and literacy programs for more than a decade, I left this session with a new way to think about and make arguments for higher education in prison as well as interesting information about an innovative way to create college/prison partnerships, albeit one that raises many questions that have yet to be answered. Speaker 1: Joseph Lockard, Arizona State University, “Prison Education as a Human Right.” In this well-researched session, Joseph Lockard provided his audience with a brief history of and rationale for higher education in prisons, framing his argument with a call to regard prison education as a “human rights issue” as it is currently defined by international law (which, as Lockard pointed out, the US takes little note of), not as a “gift” or “reward,” as higher education is currently viewed in this country. Although his presentation focused on the national need for higher education in prison, Lockard frequently used his home state of Arizona as an example of both the pressing need for such education (Lockard noted that two-thirds of inmates arriving in prison in Arizona test “beneath the eighth grade literacy level”) and the budgetary cuts and public resistance that make such programs difficult to implement. Despite oft-cited statistics that demonstrate the higher education programs in prisons are one of the few types of programs that have a demonstrable effect on recidivism, Lockard reminded his audience that “among developed nations, the United States now combines the highest level of incarceration with the lowest level of educational provision.” This statement framed the rest of Lockard’s compelling argument addressing “antagonism toward higher education in prison” by defining denial to access to education in prison as “a lasting punishment, a denial of knowledge that extends far beyond a term of incarceration.” Lockard provided his audience with information about how prison education is viewed internationally, in contrast to US policies that do not seem to honor the signed agreement the US made in 1992 to the International Covenant, which states that “higher education shall be made equally accessible to all.” Lockard noted that while the US signed this document, it was noted by the US that “the treaty would have no effect on US domestic law.” Lockard called for members of our profession to “help overcome this refusal to educate” by reminding us of the many resources we have to offer. He pointed out that many colleges and universities have already taken on this challenge by creating university/prison partnerships, but he noted that ultimately such partnerships may not be sufficient as “prison education must and will remain a domain of public provision, not volunteerism originating on university campuses.” He offered ideas for how post-secondary institutions can address such issues and ended his presentation with a reference to a program his colleague, Sherry Robertson, has implemented at a New Mexico prison in which inmates in maximum-security prisons work with students in Arizona. Lockard’s thoughtful and informative session provided a well-planned segue into Robertson’s presentation. Speaker 2: Sherry Robertson, Arizona State University, “Not Your Average Internship: Reaching the Unreachables” Robertson’s session illustrated Lockard’s compelling argument that education should be available to all inmates, even those locked away in the toughest maximum security prisons; her session also reminded the audience of Lockard’s invocation to those of us in higher education to become involved in university/prison programs. Robertson outlined the rationale for and benefits from the first year of an innovative program that pairs graduate students at Arizona State University with inmates in a New Mexico maximum security prison in an online distance course managed by Robertson and the New Mexico prison administrators. As Robertson explained, the program is part of an internship for ASU graduate students in English that is partially supported by PEN, an international organization of writers and editors. The course itself—PEN Prison Internship—is taught fully online and is the first of its kind to be offered in the US. Students read in the fields of composition and rhetoric, writing center theory, and prison education and writing; they also participated in online discussion boards and blogs and attended a program orientation. The ASU students read the handwritten work of the ninety inmates who participated in the program; volunteers at the prison scanned and put this material online. Responses were then sent back to the prison, printed out, and given to the inmates to read. Security measures, such as providing only numbers instead of names for the inmate writers, were taken to protect the identities of both the incarcerated and student writers. Robertson was fortunate to be able to implement this program with the full support of prison administrators, who saw the benefit of providing an educational program for inmates even though the New Mexico prison system had been stripped of all educational programming funds. Robertson commented on the “transformative” nature of the experience of the student interns; samples of student writing from a final portfolio supported her claim. Robertson also noted the power that seeing handwritten drafts had for the student participants. The online nature of the ASU program, in which student participants never visited the prison or met the inmate correspondents face to face, raised many questions for many audience members, including myself. Robertson, however, responded that in the future students may at least be able to visit the prison in order to begin to understand the prison environment. Both of these sessions raised fundamental questions about the rights of the incarcerated and the responsibilities we face as educators to make those rights accessible for all citizens. Even though there are many obstacles to providing access to literacy for the incarcerated, both Lockard and Robertson clearly showed the benefits for all involved in participating in programs that provide such benefits. The number of audience members at this session and the growing number of such sessions at CCCC speaks to the fact that members of our community are interested in taking on such a challenge. |