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The Importance of Education for Inmates
Advantages of educational programmes to prisoners
The Importance of Education for Inmates
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Education is about learning and experiencing the way of life. To educate yourself, you will need to have self-motivation and self-management. Some students may wonder why being educated is difficult. Students seem to run into some obstacles while being educated. In Malcolm X’s, A Homemade Education, he expresses the obstacles, which created difficulties that he had to overcome in educating himself in prison. To earn an education, there are obstacles that have to be overcome such as time management, understanding the topics, and having materials. Time management is about using one’s time to work productively. Education is about learning and one learns something new everyday. Putting time and effort in learning improves the way one’s educational …show more content…
Materials are learning aspects to achieve. There are materials in every corner of the world and it’s surroundings. College students need to be in an environment that they are comfortable with to learn and be educated. There are a variety of elements to learning and the material is not handed to you. The environment the students choose to be in either gives them motivation to study or no motivation. If the student is in an environment that is difficult to be around, it may difficult for them to study in. Malcolm X learned different aspects of the prison and what it has to offer, which was not much. Prison is much different than the world; it shows a different look on life. One has to learn a new environment if in prison or even in a different area than they were before. Prison makes one learn how to use their time wisely and use their understanding skills. The only way to understand and comprehend a topic is by having the material in front of …show more content…
Those materials could be the news, books or the Internet. In prison, Malcolm X stated, “Available on the prison library’s shelves were books on just about every general subject.” Malcolm X was provided with a variety of books to read from. Students use their notes and book for their schoolwork. If college students are trying to cram for an exam or study a topic and do not have their materials, it would cause complications. Malcolm X said, “A variety of classes were taught there by instructors who came from such places as Harvard and Boston universities.” Therefore, if the prisoners choose to have an education, they are welcomed to. This shows that college students have the choice to be in school and learn. College students are supposed to be self-motivated to improve their intelligence and study skills. College students should have time management, to have an understanding of the topics being taught, and having their materials for
Education is extremely important and can be achieved in the most unexpected places. In "Homemade Education", Malcolm tells about his time in prison, where he taught himself how to read and write. Behind the bars, through the use of a dictionary and books he became literate. In this article he explains how one can change his or her lifestyle by the taking the advantage of the opportunities that are available. This relates to me because couple of years ago, I didn't know how to speak English, but I took an advantage of the opportunities I had to learn a whole different language.
In Learning to Read, by Malcolm X, he talks about his studies while in prison. Having only up to an eighth grade education, Malcolm X struggles with reading and writing. The main reason he decided to learn how to read was because of the letters he received while in prison, primarily from Elijah Muhammad. (X 354). He wasn’t able to write responses to them like he wanted to without using slang. Along with not being able to write letters, Malcolm X couldn’t read books without skipping over most of the words, thus motivating him to study an entire dictionary. With the use of said dictionary, he also improved his penmanship by writing down every word, definition, and punctuation he saw. (X 355). Once he memorized the whole dictionary, he was then able to read books. There wasn’t a moment where Malcolm wasn’t reading even at night when the lights were out, he still managed to use the little bit of light shining into his cell to read.
Have you ever felt like a prisoner of your own mind? Well, only you can hold yourself back from reaching your true potential and being a better you. In the essay called “Learning to Read,” Malcom X discusses how his mind and body were held captive behind bars. He made a miraculous transition in his life as a grimy Harlem Hustler to an influential Muslim Civil Rights leader. On many occasions he found himself playing with fire while death was lurking right around the corner. I myself have clearly walked the many miles in shoes that resemble his, but also found a separate path that lead me towards a different road in life. The two things we have in common are that I have been incarcerated, and also used that time to better and strengthen my mind through self-taught methods. While on the contrary, we differentiate because I never approached practicing or following a religion.
Having the knowledge to read and write may take someone into a completely different universe, it allows to see reality or escape from reality. It gives a better understanding of what goes on in the world, that being good or bad depending on how he wants to see it. Malcolm X wrote a short story " A Homemade Education," about how, his experience in prison allowed him to gain knowledge and to grow as an individual. Learning to read and write showed him, how to be mentally alive in a way that changed his life forever. He took it as an ability to grow, to make a change for himself and possibly make a difference in the world. Malcolm X explained how it 's never too late to get an education, there is always time for one to change in life. It is
In “Prison Studies,” Malcolm X argues that being in prison, he became very knowledgeable. He was proud that he had got of hold of a dictionary to improve his penmanship. He has learned how to read, write, and learned many different word definitions. For instance, Malcolm X states that he couldn’t write in a straight line, read, and didn’t understand what words meant. In addition, Malcolm claims he didn’t know how many word insisted because he was reading the dictionary, and it contained millions of words. He articulates this idea when he states, “I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world.” He also believes that going to college has to many distractions. Like for organization such as “ fraternities, panty-raiding, and boola-boola,” doesn’t help student be successful as they should be. He says studying in prison was the best place to learn all his inability to read and write.
The phrase “Education is the key to success” is a common one. Then why, some may ask, is education not mandatory in prisons? All humans, criminals or not, should be granted equal opportunities to indulge in learning and further their knowledge. Getting an education is a necessary factor in receiving a college degree, obtaining a job and making a living, yet prisoners aren’t being schooled. Being taught certain lessons like how to properly read, write an essay, solve a math problem or balance a chemical equation, inmates can find something they are passionate about, which can give them reasons to continually power through incarceration. Furthermore, being able to write essays and journal entries can act as a stress reliever and be therapeutic.
In the essay “Learning to Read,” the civil rights activist Malcolm X describes all the many different literatures such as black history, learning how to read, learning every word in the dictionary, and the history of why black people and white people act the way they do towards each other, he learned during his time in prison. Malcolm X wants the readers to understand that all this time that has passed he has been stealing, robbing, and being a hustler in the streets so he never knew how to read or write. Malcolm wrote this because after learning how to read and write he could read the books in the prison library and learn more about the history
Dodd, Vikram. "Why Prison Education?." . Prison Studies Project, Teaching Research Outreach, 16 Jan. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. .
In "Ripping off some Room for People to "Breathe Together" by Simone Weil Davis and Michaels Bruce argue over the importance of education in prisons. They convey their argument by providing brief stories of prisoners that describe how education has helped them throughout their sentence. In addition, they mention that educational programs in prisons do not necessarily need to focus on math and science or the standard subjects taught in school. Instead, educational programs such as design and outreach have been put in place and have shown to tremendously benefit prisoners. In contrast Davis and Bruce bring up a downfall that has occurred
In Malcolm X's essay A Homemade Education Malcolm talks about how he uses his time wisely being incarcerated for six years. He then explains that his life as being full of violent and difficult. Malcolm’s families had received threats by the Ku Klux Klan, because his father was a support of the African movement. Because of the threats they had to move often; moving multiple times caused interruptions with his learning. His father was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and his mother was sent to a mental institution. Malcolm was affected to see that both of his parents were destroyed by the white society. Due to the lack of parental guidance, his life led to becoming a street hustler and a drug addict. While being incarcerated Malcolm X finds the
As students in college classrooms sit and listen to their teacher’s requirements and lectures, students often asked themselves why am I here? Why am I taking this class? Is it relevant to my major, my life or career choice? College-level institutions of learning have a hard time figuring out what is the best way to teach students and what works for the student’s best. According to John Dewey “how students are taught is as important as what they are taught” (415). College level students should be taught the skills and abilities that are needed to survive in the work force as well as in society as a whole. Students will face challenges after a college education leading to a different path in life rather than the one they were chasing or hoping
This idea of Malcolm's, that prison was the best situation in which to educate himself bears some examination. He dismisses the idea of going to college as being inferior to the education he received in prison. He speculates that college is perhaps filled with too many distractions (both ideas are found in the last paragraph of his essay, 19). While Malcolm states his argument in a way that is simple, direct and compelling, it is not an argument that is appropriate for every potential student. One would do well to consider Malcolm X's particular circumstances and his intended audience.
In conclusion, educational programs in prison range from very good with programs like “Reaching Out the Write Way” and the programs North Carolina has to the ones that aren’t all that good like credits for cons. “Education, in combination with work programs, can give inmates the skills they need to be successful when they return to their communities...It can enable them to do a job that reduces prison costs, such as taking messages, running a library, like Andy in Shawshank Redemption, or reading recipes to work in the kitchen” (Young 2). Many people think that educating prisoners is “being soft on crime,” but when you think about it, all it really is doing is working to make sure that the “revolving door” will stop revolving (Young 1). If this door keeps going around in the circle it is now, it will come to cost the taxpayers up to if not more than one hundred dollars a day. “The cost of education is minute in comparison to its benefits” (Young 2).
It is time to turn the tables and test the teachers on the challenge of college. Throughout high school, students are told all about how difficult college is and what to expect. Not yet having experienced it, the students typically prepare for the worst. They teach themselves how to study based on the standards of their high school. They write papers, do homework, and participate in class in the attempt to meet the expectations of their teachers. They base their picture of college off their teachers’ standards and what their peers say. While many high school students have developed accurate expectations regarding the difficulties of college, the study skills acquired in high school may not be enough to ensure success at the collegiate level.
...ning the exact expectations for administrators and all staff involved, ensuring the quality of learning that comes from different off site provider, and the biggest challenges is the aspect of money. Many states show that incarcerated students are often times denied access to federal and state-based financial aid programs and funding programs inside of prison can sometime prove more difficult that not (Borden, Richardson, & Meyer, 2012; Gorgol, & Sponsler, 2011). Other research shows that the challenges one might face when taking postsecondary education courses while incarcerated are: low completion rates, lack of overall support for the programs, the unavailability of education programs from one facility to another