Back in the 1980s I was given the opportunity to teach for a year in the Rhode Island State prison. I was teaching full-time at nearbye Barrington College at the time and took this extra opportunity to expand my horizons, both academic and personal. The first semester I taught a World Religions course to about a dozen inmates who were in the more relaxed security unit. At first I was a bit nervous, especially when one fellow seemed upset that I was getting chalk-dust on him when erasing the blackboard. Then he asked me if I had any money on me that I could give him. In the end he assured me that he was “Just jivin’ me”.
Overall, the course went along smoothly following the outline presented in a standard World Religions text by Huston Smith. There were two black men in the class who professed the Islamic faith so when we got to Islam they were especially interested and vocal. They wore the headgear that traditional Muslim men wear. When I asked them how wearing that headdress went for them, they replied that when they wore the head-dress they received a lot more respect. The other men in the class paid tight attention to them when they spoke.
Toward the end of the course one man who had been pretty quiet throughout the semester spoke up: “Jer, he said, I get confused by all the different religions I see all around me. There’s the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Seventh Day Adventurists.” Everyone laughed when he said “Seventh Day Adventurists”, but he did not get the joke until one of his buddies explained it to him. Many of these men spent a good deal of time in the library, some of them studying for their appeals and upcoming citizenship examinations.
The next semester I was “promoted” to teach a class to the men in the Maximum Security Unit. There were only six of them and our class was the only time they had contact with any other prisoners. They lived in solitary cells. I was told by a guard that two of the men had been part of a “Murder Incorporated” group in Florida and that they were in Rhode Island as part of a prisoner distribution program. All three were in prison for committing murder.
I taught a course called the “Search for Meaning” in which we read and discussed “Zorba the Greek” by Nikos Kazantzakis, “The Plague” by Albert Camus, and “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Victor Frankel. These last two books came very close to home for these men and they spoke both openly and strongly about their content. Three of them came every week having read and thought a lot about the events and ideas in the books. Along the way they had a great deal to say about their situation and how they were treated by the guards.
It was “The Plague” that seemed to grab their attention and feelings most forcefully. The admitted to feeling trapped like the citizens of Oran, and to devising similar ways to deal with their “trapped-ness”. At the end of the course, I went to great lengths to arrange to show the film “Zorba the Greek” to them. It was complicated, but well worth the trouble. They did not usually get to see any films at all because of being confined to their own individual cells. They laughed, yelled at Zorba, and loved being the scenery of the island of Crete.
I will admit that I sometimes wondered if I should be worried about being alone with these men who had committed murder, but as the weeks went bye I came to feel at home in my situation. They showed me great respect and expressed great curiosity. The third semester I taught “Creative Writing” to men in Minimum Security, specifically men who had committed sex crimes of some sort. These men were much more like guys on the outside, in a college class, for instance. Many of them were quite smart and some were quite talented writers. I got along well with these guys, and we all learned some good things about how and how not to write brief essays and stories.
I guess all in all I preferred the Maximum Security class because it was the most intense and challenging and the Minimum security class the least for the opposite reasons. All in all it was a wonderful learning experience for me and although I have tried to do it again elsewhere the opportunity has never materialized. I hope I had some positive effect and I certainly learned a great deal.