At one time the University of Pittsburgh had a program in the prison (Western Penitentiary) which offered inmates a chance to get a degree. A professor at Pitt headed the program and recruited faculty, who usually worked for free although sometimes there was enough money for a token salary. Money from the program bought the books and supplies for the students. Students could get financial aid, especially Pell Grants. However, this program is gone now because the students can no longer get financial aid. A friend of mine teaching in the program did not want all nonvocational schooling to end so she and another person proposed a noncredit certificate program which they then presented to the prison sup't and he approved it. Courses vary according to who they can get to teach, and the times vary too from a few weeks to a whole term. There are some basic rules in the program, i.e. how many sessions have to be attended by the studnets, how they are evaluated, the awarding of certificates, etc. If anyone is interested, I can probably get whatever written documentation there is from my friend and mail it to you . Let me know.
I am doing my class in a relatively informal way. I do not have a syllabus. (I will probably use one next time when I have more time to prepare). Each week I hand out an article or two to be discussed the next week. I ask students to write a page or two about the handouts if they desire, though I do insist that each of them hand in four or five over the course of the term. Then we begin each class with a discussion,which jsut takes off and quickly. The real trick is for the teacher to be able to take the discussion, which might be all over the place, and sum it up and bring it back to the issues at hand. I usually "lecture" at the end or in the middle if it seems appropriate. For example, I had them read Marx's chapters on "Primitive Accumulation" from Das Capital. In the beginning discussion, people were talking about prison labor and privatizing prisons. I turned this into a discussion of the theft of property from peasants in capitalism's roseate dawn and the abuse of the unemployed (arrest, imprisonment, torture, etc.). They could see how this applied directly to them as a surplus and disposable population, though one which could turn a profit once imprisoned. At another point a student said that a lot of people say they are opposed to capitalism but act like capitalists in their lives, implying that we are all capitalists. Another student said that the capitalists were those who owned the means of production, so most people were not capitalists. The discussion got a little heated when the second student said that if the first student was willing to become a capitalist he was willing to sell his people into slavery. I tried to defuse the situation by introducing the concept of hegemony. We all act capitalistically (selfishly) to a certain extent because that is the nature of the system and lots of people buy into it because capital has established its hegemony in our society. If I am opposed to capitalism, though,I have to act capitalistically as little as possible and oppose the hegemony however I can.
So far, I have had the students read the following:
Handout on wealth and income distribution, CEO pay, etc. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics" Marx, "Primitive Accumulation" chapters from Capital. R. Edwards, "The Logic of Capital Accumulation" Marx, section from chapter in capital, "The Working Day" Braverman, chapter from Labor and Monopoly Capital on the structure of the labor force adn the reserve army of labor Wallerstein, article on the state
I am not sure what will follow. I figure it out week by week. Probably something on the drug trade, prison labor, race discrimination, socialism, etc.
Michael Yates
Beth Goldstein wrote:
> Michael,
>
> I, too, was deeply, deeply moved by your letter. I first came to realize
> the veracity of a Marxist analysis when I taught at Kingsborough Community
> College in Brooklyn. My students were mostly black, mostly poor and
> mostly pissed off. The more time I spent there, the more I realized
> exactly why they were pissed, and how right they were to be pissed off.
> Ours is a system which requires an underclass -- and they were the unlucky
> masses. These were kids who were every bit as bright (and every bit as
> dull, and every bit as loud, and every bit as shy and every bit as
> hardworking, and every bit as lazy, and and...) as the kids I later taught
> at NYU, but they grew up in demilitarized zones of violence and
> destitution, went to horrible schools and graduated without exploring
> their potentialities, or even knowing what a verb is.
>
> I learned soooooooo much. It changed my life.
>
> I am now at SUNY Binghamton, and I am interested in starting a similar
> program here. Could you share some of the details of your program, so
> that I could get a good handle on how to do it? I would especially LOVE
> to see your syllabus. I would also like to ask the listmembers for their
> thoughts. I am a philosopher, so I would primarily be teaching
> philosophy. Given my bent, it would be social and political philosophy.
> But perhaps I could also recruit an economist, a sociologist, a comp lit
> person. I would love to hear what the list has to say on this topic.
>
> Beth Goldstein
> Beth at philosophers.net