Quotes & Sayings About Prison Education

So what indeed! The lesson I myself learned over and over again when teaching at the college and then the prison was the uselessness of information to most people, except as entertainment. If facts weren't funny or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them. — Kurt Vonnegut

Most doctors are prisoners of their education and shackled by their profession. — Richard Diaz

How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison? — Grace Lee Boggs

But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education. — Jeffrey Archer

Obesity is a prison; in the US we spend more to treat type 2 diabetes each year than is spent on education. — Paul Zane Pilzer

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. — Victor Hugo

Belief is a shelter, a prison for a curious mind. — Debasish Mridha

Have a great imagination and get out of the prison of pervasive reality. — Debasish Mridha

Poverty and a lack of education are the tools used to manipulate their minds. They are in prison just like us, only their prison has more people. — Nigel Brennan

When you have wings of love to fly,
why do you sit in a prison and cry? — Debasish Mridha

We must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world. — Amartya Sen

Those who floated in the ark were weightless and had weightless thoughts. They were neither hungry nor satisfied. They had no happiness and no fear of losing it. Their heads were not filled with petty official calculations, intrigues, promotions, and their shoulders were not burdened with concerns about housing, fuel, bread, and clothes for the children. Love, which from time immemorial has been the delight and the torment of humanity, was powerless to communicate to them its thrill or its agony. Their prison terms were so long that no one even thought of the time when he would go out into freedom. Men with exceptional Intellect, education, and experience, but too devoted to their families to have much of themselves left over for their friends, here belonged only to friends. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Be free! Get out of your prison of conforming thoughts. — Debasish Mridha

University presidents should be loud and forceful in defending the university as a social good, essential to the democratic culture and economy of a nation. They should be criticizing the prioritizing of funds for military and prison expenditures over funds for higher education. And this argument should be made as a defense of education, as a crucial public good, and it should be taken seriously. But they aren't making these arguments. — Henry Giroux

We care (about prison education), very simply, because (prisoners) get out. Almost everyone who is locked up now is going to be set free one day. If we treat prisoners like animals the whole time they are locked up, that's what we'll get when they're back on the streets: wild, dangerous animals. — Christopher Zoukis

When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison. — Martin Luther King Jr.

If we wish for our country to have an exponentially brighter future, one of the things we need to change is the popular perception some kids have towards school. School is not a prison, it is not a night club, it is not a fight club; school is for learning, learning is the thing that begins the process of separating us from the animals. — Joshua Neik

Any education that doesn't allow you to think freely is not an education but a prison. — Debasish Mridha

A person who says "every person has a right to a decent education" may not actually mean "people should be robbed to support bad schools" or "all children should be forced into a prison-like building for 12 years. — Jeffrey Tucker

Most of us are living in a prison of our fixed, false beliefs and never try to find the door to get out to see and feel the beauty of life, even when the door is wide open and welcoming. — Debasish Mridha

There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold; for them i will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; - though i confess with shame i sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by i shall have the manhood to withhold. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be free, not from a prison, but from yourself. — Debasish Mridha

Humanity suffers because most of us are living in our prison of fixed, false beliefs and we don't want to get out of it. — Debasish Mridha

Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison - to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for extermination. Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Forgiveness is the highest form of a gift of kindness and it brings freedom from the prison of hatred and revenge. — Debasish Mridha

Love is a prison of life where we always like to get in and never want to get out. — Debasish Mridha

A true education opens the mind and lets us see the world with wonder and joy. It teaches us to accept change with love, and it teaches us to be harmonious with humanity and nature. If any education teaches us to close our minds, to accept dogma, and to violently inhibit questioning then that is not an education. That is a prison for the mind. — Debasish Mridha

If you've ever wondered how many prisons need to operate withinin America, just look at the literacy rate. 60% of America's prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. — United States Dept. Of Education

The prison population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those who are usually described as 'the criminals' proper, and of whom we have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered as preventive of anti-social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Every one knows that absence of education, dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the happiness of others are the causes which bring this class of people before the courts. Now I was deeply impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these defects of human nature
each one of them
which the prison breeds in its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison, and will breed them so long as it exists. — Pyotr Kropotkin

It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I'd walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious. — Jennifer Egan

They say you can tell a lot about a country by the way it treats its prisoners ... I believe the same can be said for how a country treats its children — Jill Telford

Benefits of Improv To the Editor: Re "Inmate Improv," by Anna Clark (Op-Ed, Dec. 31): It was not surprising to me that an improvisational theater workshop would help a prison inmate adjust to life after his release. Pretend play has been shown to improve the executive-function skills in preschool and school-age children. These skills include the ability to control emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exercise self-control and discipline. As poor executive-function skills are associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime, it would behoove all adults involved in child-rearing to encourage role-playing or "improv." STEVEN ROSENBERG Fairfield, Conn., Dec. 31, 2014 The writer is director of the Elementary Reading Program at the University of Bridgeport School of Education. — Anonymous

The atmosphere [in the school lunchroom] is not quite that of a prison, because the students are permitted to talk quietly, under the frowning scrutiny of teachers standing around on duty, during their meal-they are not supposed to talk while standing in line, though this rule is only sporadically enforced. — Edgar Friedenberg

Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly. — Bobby Scott

Providing post-secondary and academic education to only 10 to 30 per cent of our prison population can translate to more than $60 billion a year added to state and national coffers. — Christopher Zoukis

Prison itself is a tremendous education in the need for patience and perseverance. It is above all a test of one's commitment. — Nelson Mandela

Find the window of unconditional love in your heart and liberate yourself from the prison of judgemental and conforming thoughts. — Debasish Mridha

If the people would but analyze the human equation of a prison they might better account for the crimes that are visited upon them in cities, towns, and hamlets, ofttimes by men who graduated with an education and equipment for just that sort of retributive service from some penal institution. — Eugene V. Debs

You are a prisoner of your thoughts. Expand your thoughts and get out of the prison. — Debasish Mridha

Going to school is like going to prison ... you have about two weeks to establish your credibility, failing which you're either a punk or as good as dead. Depending on the school, some students can manage ot avoid those stark alternatives, but even at the best school, no teacher does. — Garret Keizer

We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent. — Jason Whitlock

Often religious education teaches us to conform and creates a psychological prison which is difficult to escape. — Debasish Mridha

Prison for the crime of puberty
that was how secondary school had seemed. — David Brin

We are never free when we imprison ourselves in the prison of our fixed, false beliefs. — Debasish Mridha

We are the prisoners of conformity. To get out of this prison, education is the only door and only opportunity. — Debasish Mridha

Crime is a social problem, and education is the only real deterrent. Look at all of us in prison; we were all truants and dropouts, a failure of the educational system. Look at your truancy problem, and you're looking at your future prisoners. Put the money there. — Wilbert Rideau

Oh my eye Betty Martin! Aren't I glad it isn't me that's going to school! It looks just like a prison. — Henry Handel Richardson

Perhaps you have heard about the college executives who were discussing what they wanted to do after retirement age. One hoped to run a prison or school of correction so that the alumni would never come back to visit. Another chose to manage an orphan asylum so that he would not be plagued with advice from parents. — Robert H. Jackson

There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor ... In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains. — George Bernard Shaw

Education shouldn't be the prison of known knowledge, but it should be the bridge to find the yet unknown universe of knowledge. — Debasish Mridha

You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison. — Hill Harper

Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative's prison-style showers - one nozzle for four to six girls at a time - in the locker room.
It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.
Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,
I'd always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it.
See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. — Meg Cabot

A liberal education ... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation. — Robert M. Hutchins

Abolition is not some disstant future but something we create in every moment when we say no to the traps of empire and yes to the nourishing possibilities dreamed of and practiced by our ancestors and friends. Every time we insist on accessible and affirming health care, safe and quality education, meaningful and secure employment, loving and healing relationships, and being our full and whole selves, we are doing abolition. Abolition is about breaking down things that oppress and building up things that nourish. Abolition is the practice of transformation in the here and now and the ever after. — Eric A. Stanley

All the studies and all the research in the field of criminology affirm that prison education is the least expensive and most effective solution to overcrowding and strain on the budget caused by recevidism. — Christopher Zoukis

Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.
We keep hearing about "change." Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to "change" passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons. — Ellen J. Barrier

Moral growth is a central idea in religion and law. The idea of repentance presupposes the possibility for moral growth. In law, "showing remorse" is a demonstration of moral growth and grounds for a reduced prison sentence. The idea of moral growth has long been associated more with liberal than with conservative politics. This comes out clearly in the politics of prisons. The concept of rehabilitation is based on the concept of moral growth. The idea is that if prisoners are treated humanely, taught useful skills, encouraged to get an education, allowed to earn furloughs, and provided with a job upon release, they will have a chance to grow morally and become useful citizens. Not that this is guaranteed, by any means. But if prisoners do grow morally, there is no reason to keep them in prison. T — George Lakoff

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education. — Angela Davis