An Educator's Dilemma

Every day I enter a world of hierarchy that I cannot fully comprehend--a world in which I am expected to teach, transform, and rehabilitate incarcerated women into "productive" citizens. It is a world where political forces blow powerfully on anyone that challenges the status quo. I work with a population that most Americans wish would disappear. For most people, they exist on fictional television shows and the occasional jaunt in the Sunday news. I work with the women inmates at a correctional facility's "Community Reintegration Program" located in an urban area of the Midwestern United States. As with most correctional facilities, it's a place of crisis and control; it's an environment with conditions suitable for radical change, but rarely used as such. As a result of incarceration, the women that I work with become mechanical in their responses. They are trained to say what they think their judge, jury, counselor, probation officer, attorney, or teacher wants to hear. This mechanical response spills over into the classroom where they respond to questions in ways that appear scripted. Most do not take any interest in the Basic Adult Education curriculum that is being taught, but rather sit and stare with empty eyes. I attribute the lack of interest in the learners' inability to see the relevance in this curriculum. Sure, she wants to move forward with her life, get her high school diploma or equivalent, but this incentive doesn't seem to be enough motivation to get her to a point of taking steps in the right direction. I have found that when teaching, the only thing that provokes genuine questions and answers are things pertinent to their current situation, such as lessons on affordable housing, learning about their Constitutional Rights, and the science behind the effects of drugs on the brain. Lately, my teachings have been led by their desire to learn about things that matter to them. However, I am painfully aware of the potential consequences of teaching a somewhat radical curriculum. You see, I am taking basic adult education principles to the extreme. I am meeting the learner where she is (a criminal), and hooking into her experiences (criminal behavior) to derive the content of the curriculum (Taylor, Marienau, & Fiddler, 2000). In doing so, I am constantly questioning whether or not I am teaching criminals how to be better criminals. Needless to say, teaching this population of women can be a daunting task. I often leave work feeling inadequate and unsuccessful because I wasn't able to get through to them. I have found that the most challenging part of my job is to bridge the gap between what they need to know and what inmates want to know. That is, they need to understand what behaviors led them to incarceration in the first place, how to change these behaviors, and what new learning or unlearning is required to get them to a place where they will not recidivate. There is value in what they already know. For example, the majority of the women have learned to survive without legal employment. They steal, cheat, hustle, sell drugs, and manipulate government welfare systems. But as a society, we demonize and shun them for this knowledge because it is "criminal" knowledge. Rather than using this knowledge as a basis for new learning, we attempt to present other new information in an unfamiliar context. Until the laws regarding felon status are changed, the opportunity for advancement of ex-offenders in our society is minimal. Once a person has a criminal background, she will find it difficult if not impossible to find employment. As a result, I have looked at models and theories that create opportunities for ex-offenders, and a lot of times it means teaching ex-offenders entrepreneurial skills so that they can create employment for themselves. The Delancey Street Project in San Francisco is exemplary of this type of model (The Delancey Street Foundation, 2008). The project assists ex-offenders in creating small businesses to become self-sufficient. …