Prison Program Turns Inmates Into Intellectuals - NYTimes.com
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Still, an intellectual firmament has taken hold. On a recent afternoon, 10 men gathered under the tutelage of Baz Dreisinger, a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to share some of their writing and to talk about the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” One of the students, Theron Smith, serving time on a second-degree murder conviction, noted that Freire’s work called to mind Hegel and the theory of double consciousness. Mr. Smith is an avid consumer of sociological texts; his longtime friend Rowland Davis, next to him in class that day, has immersed himself in theology. Another student had been creating an elaborately illustrated graphic novel.
In nearly every instance, when the men read from their own compositions, the writing was absorbing, learned and impeccable. All of the men had gained admission, through a competitive application process, to a program initiated by John Jay three years ago that allows prisoners who have high school diplomas or G.E.D.s, and who are eligible for release within five years, to amass college credits, and then when they leave, to complete degrees in the City University system. Ms. Dreisinger is the program’s academic director and founder, overseeing the teaching of art history, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison and so on. She is adamant about the instruction of grammar, which is why the men’s writing stands out even beside what you might find among students at elite high schools where a warning about dangling modifiers is often considered a benighted waste of time.
