March 26, 2015
When looking for my next ebook, I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by my wish list selections. This particular book was available to anyone for a limited time, a "Big Library Read," so of course I wanted to check it out. I really ought to join a book club or something! Anyway, I'm very glad I read this, considering the environment that I teach in and the difficulties I've had there lately.
So Dr. Bates is a professor of English (and education, I think) at Indiana State. She got into volunteering as a teacher for inmates years ago, and when she got her Ph.D. with a focus on Shakespeare, she was eager to start up a program in prison. Why? Because she (correctly) felt that inmates could relate to many of Shakespeare's themes. She mainly did this to prove a point for her dissertation or something, but she ended up running the program for a decade or so.
The book is mainly about one particular inmate named Larry Newton. Newton had a history of violence, and had spent a decade in the SHU when Bates met him. He showed himself right away to be a thoughtful reader, analyzing Shakespeare's texts in a way that left her amazed. He helped her to create questions for the program that would allow for self-reflection: racial themes in Othello, revenge in Hamlet, greed in Macbeth, that kind of thing. This allowed him and his fellow inmates to reflect on their own lives, decisions, and feelings.
This book is valuable for Newton's own insights into the mind of a "criminal." This is where I got the most out of it, as he reflected on why he ended up being convicted of murder at the age of 17. In the program that I work in, I've been told that while most of these young men won't go out and offend anyone sexually (the reason they're there in the first place), it's pretty likely that they'll commit other crimes. But no one ever explained to me why this could be the case. Now I have a better idea; now I get why some kids get so anxious before they leave the program. It gives me such a sense of helplessness. Newton explained to Bates that there are no "magic words" to say to these kinds of at-risk youth that will get them to turn their lives around, and I think I'd been hoping that there was.
Now, I don't see teaching Shakespeare to the majority of my students as being very practical. That's because many of them struggle just to read on grade level, and would be intimidated, and thus resistant, to such a task. Bates had a group of inmates who volunteered to join her program, so Shakespeare wasn't forced on anyone. But I know I can find texts that students can relate to, maybe ones that can help them to view their own situations at a different perspective. Hell, that's the best way to approach teaching literature to adolescents, regardless of the setting.
Newton said that people can put themselves into prisons in many ways. The criminal who serves his time and is paroled could still be imprisoned by the pressures that caused him or her to turn to criminal activity in the first place. Fear can keep a person from having important experiences. I feel like Newton is a wise, reflective individual, and the only way I would have appreciated this book more is if he'd written it himself.
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