I’m for rehabilitation, not incarceration.
Once you turn prisons over to the private business sector, they’re in it to make money and to keep those beds occupied. When the no occupancy sign goes up, which means filled to capacity, it’s time to build another prison with dollar signs in corporate eyes not rehabilitation on their minds.
Their goal is to perpetually cut costs, not build inspiration.
To save money, they reduce the size of the occupied units to bare minimum, many times two people in an eight by eight foot cell. With the size of people growing in width, that hardly leaves room for one to turn over in bed. That’s torture. People are not designed by nature to live in huddled masses, so let’s get that straight from the get go.
There’s no money in rehabilitation, but there could be. Naysayers will point out that you can’t force inmates to go to school, but we force children to go to school, so what’s the difference; if inmates can’t function in normal society without acting out and putting others in danger, then they need to be schooled, not punished. Punishment works short term, not long term no matter what the statisticians say.
These are not your regular type classes. They must be geared to the emotional make-up of the imprisoned mind. The skill sets are the same, but the delivery is not. Online classes don’t work because they don’t keep the student’s attention long enough for them to learn. Or if online is preferable, then the design must change to keep one’s interest – not by adding pornography by the way. That doesn’t solve anything. Sometimes researchers don’t think beyond their own prejudices.
Societies can’t keep throwing everybody who doesn’t fit the mold of good behavior into prisons to wipe their hands of them. It doesn’t start with the families, because kids mostly spend only sleep time and get up in the morning time with them. The bulk of the time is spent in school, so make the schools work better. Nobody even likes school, I know I didn’t. School itself is a punishing experience. Forcing to sit long periods of time in straight chairs in front of small desks is antiquated and cruel.
Open your minds and teach by guiding, by giving choices, by motivational and inspirational learning techniques.
Start by wanting something better, a better system for all. We’re falling behind in the world and need to find ways to let students soar, not just the upper tier students with the highest IQs coming from families with the most money.
We spend all our money on functioning as the military for every other country and relatively speaking nothing on advancing our own culture by motivating our own people to succeed on their terms not some made up terms by a bunch of angry scientists who like to stick it to non-achievers through punishment.
Stop with the punishment tactics in school. It creates resentment that carries on till death, actually. Keep the military tactics out of the learning process. Stop standardizing, trying to make everybody fit into the same mold, when you know in advance it produces a lot of failures and drop outs.
Drop the British model of humiliating people to get them to do what you want. The hurt lasts forever. It cannot be cured. They know it, because it was done to them, so they have to do it to others.
Wake up researchers, administrators and teachers. If you have a calling I’m not seeing any expression of it. Open doors, don’t close them for closed minded politicians who are afraid of offending anyone with something new and exciting.
You know what to do and even if you don’t, then try a few strategies on yourself to see what works for you, then share that knowledge. Okay?
SHARON ON THE NEWS™ 