Redeeming Time: The Bard Prison Initiative
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics , 7.2 million people were either in jail, prison, or on parole by the end of 2009. A more startling statistic is that 1 out of every 32 adults in America is incarcerated. Most of those people will eventually be released (about 275,000 people per year) and at least 65% of them will be re-incarcerated within 3 years. Can a college education change these statistics? Bard College thinks it can, and they are doing something about it. They are bringing a high quality liberal arts curriculum into prisons and transforming lives.
Advertisement
This is fantastic, John. I’m reposting on FB and on my blog.
August 4, 2011 at 11:15 pm
In Harper’s or Atlantic over a decade ago there was an article where the Chicago Great Books curriculum used at St. John’s College, was inaugurated with amazing success. Sorry I have no link but maybe someone does.
January 18, 2012 at 7:39 am
I would be very interested in reading that article if you can locate it or find a reference to it.
January 18, 2012 at 1:02 pm
I wish I could. I subscribed to Harpers at the time so I bet it was in there. We are talking about the time period from 1995(Jan)-1999 (Dec) somewhere in the middle. It really is a very inspirational learning experience for these incarcerated ghetto young people to be reading Plato, Aristotle, etc and really absorbed. I would just do the same as you start googling until I found it. Let me know if you need more help. Hutchins was in on the Great Books. Dewey I think. Thorndike maybe. Mortimer Adler is the one. Try him.
Now my eyes are tearing for what could be. I taught in a “free school” for one year 1966-67 and I grew more intellectually that one year than in any other of my life. They taught me everything.
Avery Gosfield 7 or 8 at the time:
Oh Atlas
With your glistening finger
Bore a hole through the earth
So man may die
And the animals
Live in peace
She’s a marvelous musician now
Or Mila Holt that same year:
On we trudge into the dying dimbers of tonight – as she took giant steps down the sidewalk in NYC on the way to the Klee retrospective.
And and and stories stories stories endless stories of that year.
Her father, Tolly Holt, had been reading Dylan Thomas to her.
January 18, 2012 at 9:19 pm
I haven’t been here for awhile so yesterday I had no idea what this was going to lead to. I read a few of your past postings on Arendt whom I adore. Then surprise as I didn’t know her work on Nietzsche. Arendt + Nietzsche got me to a google page with Babich in the title of an article with Arendt and Nietzsche.
Babich. Babette Babich. Nancy Babich. Code for the Czech scary smart gun Eric Packer uses to kill his bodyguard Torval in DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. DeLillo is a piece of work! Babette is Jack’e wife in White Noise. Nabokov, Pyncheon, Foster Wallace, Oh my!
Torval: reverse lavrot – lav, lave, wash, rainstorm, cleanse – rot. Clean the rot, rat is the unit of currency, kill him with the smart gun with the code word for releasing the trigger: Nancy Babich. Can we get Nancy, nance, out of Torval? Lacan can take one in or out of madness easily.
So now I have another reading for Cosmopolis to work on.
January 18, 2012 at 9:29 pm