Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1914-09-11
The Strangest School In The
World.
Bruce Barton in Golfers Weekly.

Bruce Barton in Golfers Weekly.
The Strangest School in the World is at
the bottom of long flight Of steps in the
Maryland State Penitentiary. Not the fact
that it is in penitentiary makes it strange,
not the long row of whitewashed cells that
almost touch the desks. nor the blue-cOated
guard who occupies the extreme back seat.
There are schools in other penitentiaries,
some Of them with long, honorable histo-
ries. But the strangest school is different
in its teachers. its pupils, its methods and
its results.
There are liz pupils, 16 teachers, and
the average age of pupils and teachers
together is 33 1-3 years. One of the teach
ers is murderer doing life; one is high
way robber doing 20 years; one is biga-
mist one forger and only the warden
knows what the others were or did to bring
them there. In one class of eight scholars
! met two bigamists murderer, burglar
and one who had burned down store.
The baby of the school is barely turned Fl,
hardly more than boy the eldest is IL.
Altogether the school constitutes nearly
third of the whole population of the prison I;
and not man of the whole liz scholars
now enrolled could read a daily paper or
write his own name.
They filed in quickly at the beginning Of
the session, as though eager to be at their
books; and when | looked around there
was not one vacant seat. They were of
all types, young, fresh-looking lads with
the bloom of health on their cheeks old
men on whose faces the whitewashed walls
of the prison had cast its pale, fixed shad-
Ows; men who held their heads high, and
men who turned their faces from you as
they passed men with hope still strong
in their eyes; and dOgged, almost sullen
men; white men and black men; men
who would pass out into world for a new
lease of life and men who had ceased long
ago even to dream about the world. With
only few preliminaries the teacher wrote
on blackboard the lessons that were to
occupy this session, and the liz twisted
their stiff fingers clumsily about their pen
ellis and bent their muscled backs to write.
Use each one of these words in SEN
tence"-the teacher had written: "Obedi-
ence. bottom, protection, health, family.
laugh"
walked in and out among the great
straining bodies and watched them write.
No breadth of thought or nicely of ex-
preston was here, but in almost every
sentence one might read something that
revealed the writer's own pathetic, starved
experience.
Il am obedience to the warden in this
place, wrote one bulky highwayman, fash
iOning each letter with infinite exertiOn.
Until the school started he had never lived
through month in the prison without be-
ing summoned before the warden for dis
cipline but for six months now he has
been obedience"
Most men are good at the bottom of
their hearts this from a lifer in for muir
der; and ave are protection by the warden
in this place" from clean looking young
fellow whose six months of enforced alb
stinence have pretty thoroughly removed
the thirst for liquor that brought him to
disgrace.
MY family has pritty hard time" One
could well believe it as he looked back of
the writing to the shrunken form of the
negro writer.
At the back of the room | stopped
moment to glance over the shoulder of a
tired-faced little pickpocket, whose hunched
shoulders seemed to have shrunk in upon
themselves under the weary burden Of life.
81 laughed at monkey" he had written,
and then added, letter by letter, 1t h + e
years ago" And | felt suddenly
great pity for the poor pickpocket, in whose
life laughs had been so rare blessing that
he remembered their very number and the
year in which each had come.
To Warden Leonard belongs the credit
for founding the strangest school there
had been no school in the Maryland peni-
Tertiary for more than a hundred years,
though every annual report had scheduled
nearly third of the inmates as illiterate.
But the patience and the untiring devotion
OF the two prisoner teachers who laid out
the plan of instruction and carried it through
to success is equally noteworthy. Without
guidance or help Of any sort they had to
blaze out their own path and they have
succeeded. One hundred and seventy-two
prisoners. all of them over 81, all illiterate.
have been taught to read and write, and
have passed out Of the school either in the
open world or into the graduate department.
They point out eagerly-the warden and
his prisoner teachers-the various features
OF the school that stir their parental pride
II mas improved the discipline Of the inSti-
tuition wonderfully, they say; not one sin
gle pupil of the school-and there we're
some very bad actors among them-has
been summoned for discipline since the
sessions opened. OF the graduates some
are holding good jobs on the outside, some
the warden has lost sight of, but not one
has been brought back
The warden asked me to remember all
this when wrote. and do. But the thing
that cannot forget is the "lifer" standing
with the book in his hand behind those iron
bars and smiling out at me. Thirty-three
years he hal lain in the grave of his cell,
dead to every thought or emotion and
to-day he wanders at will with Robin
son Crusoe, or travels the long road with
Pilgrim, or speeds over the golden high
ways into pleasant fields. into temples and