At the end of class today, I asked each of you to write--in the "rheomode"--a description of "what was happening" (then, there). Here is what we wrote, and then read to one another...a collective poem:

delving converse deconstructing familiarity

crawling across the chairs are the ants

rustling trees make hearing hard

making this area cool, the shade

sitting, enjoying with intentions for learning

the blowing of the breeze is moving the trees and rustling papers being written on by students

talking is going on

air moving

rethinking thinking know

circulating

re-communionate

writing, intending to disorient

negotiation and re-negotiation and irre-negotiation

breathing

I am not exactly sure how to express myself in this post and I am a little worried because the following thoughts will expose my judgemental side--but I suppose everyone is guilty of passing judgement at some point in their life. I stopped reading Colored Amazons mid-way through the 4th chapter because I got really uncomfortable and really angry. The chapter told the story of two black women who killed a white male farmer during the negotiation stage of sexual services. In the media, the women were portrayed as savages who ruthlessly killed a white man who was seemingly drunk and unknowing. However, the media failed to reveal a reality and hidden agenda of the parties invovled. To be blunt, the white man came to the women for sex and they were going to provide that service because, as Gross explained in an earlier chapter, black females were not protected by the law; therefore, their bodies were subjected to sexual exploitation and exoticism. I have never known this history in great detail but I, as a black female, have seen how the ripple affects of this history continue to haunt black communities, black females in my life and myself--my first boyfriend was a white boy. Therefore, reading this chapter reminded me of how uncomfortable and upset I get when I see interracial couples between a white man and black female (bring on the "love is color-blind, love has no limits"..blah blah, I have heard it all).

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to share my experience using Twitter to "microblog" (whatever that means) about my day
last class but I wanted to share something that I think fits in quite nicely with the article that Jen Rajchel tweeted under the
#netloged255 hastag about the use of your real name on Facebook.

I'm not an avid fan of Twitter but I do have two accounts: one that's personal (and protected) and one that projects a more
"professional image". In fact, my best friend (in a tweet no less) commented on the "proper-ness" of my account. It's interesting
to reflect on why I choose to have two accounts. In my personal account, I follow various popular figures and my friends. The
people who follow me mostly know me personally and I consider it as somewhat of a brain dump. Scrolling through my past tweets,
I see my inner thoughts, inside jokes, and a lot of mean comments. (What does this say about me? I don't even wanna...) However,
my more "professional" account has tweets about my academic interests, tweets from another class I took, and the tweets I wrote
for #netloged255.I don't know the people who follow me personally, nor do I really know much about the people who I follow.

I wanted a female-bodied avatar -- and I like this artist a lot. His name's Conrad Roset-- and he does really powerful illustrations of people with a few simple lines and water color. The eyes in this one were particularly striking. I feel like it speaks to silenced women-- but in a way I can't exactly articulate. 

During last class discussion, many of my peers mentioned the similarities and correlations between school and prison. I was surprised and had to admit that there are indeed many overlapping philosophies of two seemly irrelevant facilities, a confined space with many people, some levels of administrative stuff, spend some time to achieve certain purpose and etc.

However, after reading the two articles about higher education in prison, I realize the topic of higher education in prison has evolved to such a complicated one after 200 hundred years.  The fundamental paradox arises from the “tension between competing vision of what prisoners themselves are and accordingly, what prisoners should or ought to be?” ( Jones, d’Errico, 1)

Religion plays an important role in starting the education program in prison. (Interestingly, religious authority also initiated the original reform of educational system by starting charity school). However, prisons are after all institutions built for corrections purpose. This ongoing conflict between administrators and educators become the forces shape development t of higher education in prison.  Pennsylvania is one of the earliest state to start the program led by Quakers.

I am really struggling with the idea of distance learning, brought up in Jones and Errico’s discussion about Prison education. In a practical sense, learning through technology seems more cost effective and as though it would allow for a much wider range of what inmates could be learning about. I definitely like the idea of prisoners having more available to them to learn from. Especially when considering what we have been discussing in class about the implicit ways in which we are taught in classrooms, a distance style learning seems as though it would be more likely to encourage independence and freedom of thought. Jones and Errico cite another author when talking about this: “Concepts such as “University without walls” and “Open University,” for example (Robinson 1977), bespeak the desire to decentralize learning in order to reach special populations and emphasize self-directed and prior learning at the expense of traditional instruction.” I definitely understand the value in being able to learn in way that is least likely to be biased by the language used in a traditional classroom. However, I can’t shake the feeling that this type of distance learning can also be limited, and that there is something desirable about being able to learn from another human being. I especially cannot help but to feel that not having classmates could be a terribly isolating experience. Maybe it is different in the sense that prisoners are already very isolated ?

One thing that really struck me about the Jones and D’Errico article was the director of a prison-based higher education program who is quoted as saying “They don’t tell us how to teach, and we don’t tell them how to lock people up.” The more I think about it, the more I think that higher education in prison should assume this role.  Jones and D’Errico grapple with the question of whether or not resources should be used to teach incarcerated individuals, but I think a much more important question is: if education programs exist in prisons, what kind of programs should they be?  I have a really hard time applying ideas of reform and rehabilitation from 200 years ago to our exponentially larger criminal justice system today.  I think that, at least in the US, using education as a way to carry out Freire’s idea of dialogical education could be very powerful.  We have a huge problem of racialized and gendered incarceration, of over-incarceration, of a privatized industry being given incentives to put even more people in that system.  Shouldn’t education in prison be used to counteract that?  To allow for dialogical conscious-raising, and to teach about the realities of the situation?  Maybe prison-based teachers shouldn’t literally be telling prison wardens how to do their job, but shouldn’t they start a dialogue about whether the “business of locking people up” needs to change?  Rather than going with Frank Hall’s proposal of putting prisons in the middle of college campuses, I think there needs to be a focus on figuring out wh

I found the questions that Jones and d'Errico asked to be very important but most often neglected when the public and media talk about schooling in prisons. First, they ask about the goal and purpose of education in prisons. This question really asks those who attempt to do schooling in prison to question their purpose, are they there because they see the prisoners as deficient and in need of reform? Or are they there because they believe that the curriculum will provide an opportunity for learning and growth? Then, the question about who educates and what type of education will take place went even deeper. This question really had me thinking back to the purpose of education. Should these classes provide them with the skills necessary to apply and find jobs after their release? Should they focus on exploring the liberal arts and the humanities? Most importantly however, was the way in which we think about and attempt to answer this question. If we have the idea of a prisoner in mind when thinking about which kind of education should be provided, then we automatically fall back into labeling prisoners and setting up a system that already names them as inferior. How then can we strip ourselves of misconceptions about who incarcerated people are, and see them as human beings who need to experience growth just like the rest of us? What is it about incarceration that completely changes our views of the kind of education "they deserve"? And in thinking about this, why aren't their voices present in creating curriculum and programs?