| Tuesday, October 16, 2007 1:44PM | | | | Teaching at Sing Sing Prison | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Prison, Teaching, Sing Sing | I have now been teaching at Sing Sing prison for about two years, yet this is the first time that I have even begun to write about it. The idea crossed my mind before I entered the iron gates, since, after all, I am a writer.... But I worried that it might be presumptuous, that even if I never showed my journal to a soul recording what I saw might be violating the integrity of the experience. Perhaps what gives me the confidence to begin now is that I no longer feel like an intruder. I have become an "insider." Not to the world of the inmates, about whose lives I still know very little, but to the larger world of the prison, which includes guards, inmates, ministers, teachers, and others. Divided by roles though they may be, these all share a special understanding and even a limited camaraderie.
In so many ways, entering the prison is like going back in time. To begin with, it rises on a hilltop beside the Hudson River, creating a silhouette like that of a medieval castle. People sailing by could easily take it for the neo-Gothic folly of some "robber baron" of the nineteenth century, but the stark walls and watchtowers are real. If you approach by night, you will see flashes of light as you walk by. At first, they can appear a bit like tinsel, but they are bits of barbed wire gleaming in the moonlight. Movement by people though the structure is closely monitored, and there are checkpoints at intervals in the corridors. Geese and racoons, however, seem to cross the walls with ease.
Each afternoon when I go to teach I must pass first through a stone gate wide enough for a coumn of three men to march through abreast, beneath the arms of New York State and the motto "excelsior." The guard opens an iron gate with a key as large as those that dangled from the waist of a bailiff of the nineteenth century. I must leave behind reminders of the modern world, from electronic equipment to newspapers. I must pass through a metal detector like those used at airports, and submit all bags to a search. By now, all of this is just a familiar routine, but it is still a reminder, if a friendly one, that I am entering a different world.
In its austerity, as well as the segregation by sex, the prison is a bit like a monastery. To be placed in a maximum security prison, many the inmates must be guilty of graves crimes, but I do not wish to learn what these may be. Their manner, at any rate, is almost never threatening, and often seems to be show a sort of old-fashioned courtesy, an almost courtly manner. In a life of confinement, they are drawn to the adventure of learning with far more passion than students on the outside. Everyone I have spoken to who has taught there agrees that the inmates are far more intellectually curious than other college students, and you never have akward pauses in class discussions. | | |
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| 1-1-10 1:34PM: Paul Arbitelle said...
Yes,as an inmate of Sing Sing from 1964 to 1969, I do agree with you,The will to learn becomes an overwhelming priority within your mind.I was sentence to 15 years,and was told that i would do every single day of it,if i continued to help others with law work,but that did not deter me,i helped others that were worthy and eventually i obtained my own release through that of the federal courts,Yes i became what is referred to as a jailhouse lawyer by way of the God given ability to learn,,Do keep up the good work.
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