LOVE AND WORK

The Case of David
How Correctly Designed Class Work

Helped Eliminate Re-Offending

So often times it happens
That we live our lives in chains
And never even know we have the key
... The Eagles


It was a few minutes before the start of class on my first day inside a prison. Two dozen inmates drifted around smoking and making small talk when the big man swaggered in. He undid his belt buckle and the top button of his jeans, pulled downward on the zipper and tugged at his underwear. Someone pulled the window shades and turned off the lights. You could have heard a pin drop.

Oh, I said, my terrified self trying to smile, you're going to show us your penis. How nice. Then I turned to the group with a thumbs up and a complicit grin.

In a New York minute the room was bedlam with men whooping and whistling, applauding and laughing and stamping their feet till some had tears in their eyes. Whoa! Babe! Way to go! The big man looked around to see whether he’d lost face and realised no one was paying attention to him anyway so he joined in with a sheepish grin and ambled off to find a seat.

Eight months later 12 among these men, ages 21 to 48, all repeat offenders, proudly made a commitment to one another and a law-abiding life. They founded STAYFREE, whose mission was TO NEVER COMMIT A CRIME AGAIN THROUGH BECOMING EDUCATED FOR JOBS WITH GROWTH POTENTIAL. STAYFREE's business would be advising prisons on how to design education that eliminates re-offending.

The Governor said he’d watched in near disbelief as seemingly dispirited, sullen, obfuscating individuals had become both a group of friends and a work team. He said that they were exceeding quality standards for their prison jobs and working with politeness and pride that astonished the guards. He wondered whether whatever had inspired these few could be a route to self-esteem and productive life for many. He asked me what I’d done and why it had been successful.

Hats off to the educational materials I introduced on the first day, I said.

Inquiry Learning and Meaningful Work

On the first day, I set out Machine Sense, which is a program of materials specially designed so that people may work on machine design whether or not they can read, write or do any mathematics. Each participant considers an innovation, makes a work plan and systematically completes a unique design.

Six weeks later the group proudly mounted a Machine Sense Exhibit about design innovation, and that Exhibit was a turning point and where the real transformation story begins.

A Professional Exhibition

The men mounted a professional exhibition, each innovation drawn to to a high technical specification and properly labeled. The other inmates sensed dignity, pride, and respectability and many wanted in. I told the Governor I’d welcome all who wanted to join. Each would need foundation work in Machine Sense, though, so I started up Foundation classes with the old hands helping out.

Well. Now the original group was a team of designers, learners, leaders and teachers. Everyone in the study group ignored breaks. They stopped provoking guards. They ironed their shirts on class days, didn’t skip class and arrived on time. Among the men there was an air of excitement, of being compact, of belonging together. Common responsibility and respect wove a gossamer bond of trust and camaraderie and friendship. They were happy people and everyone could feel it. They made history in the prison.

Work Engenders Reflection and the Need for Intimacy

The men were growing up emotionally and had questions.What caught us up in all this? I mean, we clean toilets to a shine as if they was our own kitchen sinks. David irons his shirts every damn day and Billy Davis is looking so smart you’d think we was havin' a dance. What happened?

And then powerful questions: Could we do this at home? Would that keep our kids off the bad roads? Could we start our kids on something while we’re still in here?


From there the men moved ahead in leaps and bounds, as people do who feel the chance for growth. They talked about visiting day and phone calls; of feeling bottled up, choked, inadequate, shy, stupid, and useless. They talked of staring at their kids and talking tough and feeling soft and wishing they could say what they felt. They said all they really wanted was to say, “I love you.” One of the men cried. So did I. It wouldn’t be long now. I knew it and so did they.

Intimacy, Love and Self-Actualization - The Road Home

The men formed a Father's Discussion Group, drew a poster, and nailed it to a dusty book-closet door. Between the evening meal and lock-up we met in the closet weekly. Thirty new faces, mostly men I’d never met, crowded around with the others and trailed out the door bending their ears so as not to miss a thing. They asked for information about what kids need from parents, about girls and fathers, sons and fathers, husbands and wives and their part in making children’s lives promising.

The Librarian offered to read aloud. I brought children's books and a child development text and he read whenever the men caught a few minutes in the library. They started doing prison jobs at dawn in order to meet before breakfast, and there was a lot said of learning about kids by reading stories kids love.

...

One Tuesday Jerry stopped us in our tracks, picked us up and carried us to the road home. Age 38, father of one girl age 15, he was the most troubled of all the men and the most frequent offender. He’d been in jail more than half his life. That evening he was tense. The guard told me he’d seemed distracted and inward for days.

Before we had settled into the tiny room, he stood up and paced, chain smoking. The kid, the kid, the kid. I’m always thinking about the kid, talking about the kid. Don't I have to know about me before I try to raise a kid? I don’t know who the hell I am. Maybe who I am is who she is. How the hell do I find out who I am?

He handed me a package. A present, he mumbled. He'd made a small pottery jar in the form of a bust with a phrenology map on the head, and a heart where the heart goes, and a giant question mark inside the lid. Who knows? he said again, and went away.

* * *

And so they had arrived inside themselves and had found a comfortable place to start on an orderly route toward a new path of thinking and feeling about their lives in the world.

They formalised the weekly evening meetings: half Father’s Discussion, half Personal Development. Their bonding quickly outgrew the bounds of the formal meetings. They helped one another write letters to their kids, and even stood together during phone calls home.

They had driven right through to the basics, I explained to the Governor, and were ready to move ahead from there to a productive life.

Putting a Stake in the Ground

I knew they were ready because one day they decided to tell everyone in the prison what they’d learned. They would, they decided, give a lecture on human conception and birth to explain how a person could become a criminal and some ways to avoid it.

The Governor said he barely kept his jaw from the proverbial drop when a Father’s Discussion Group delegation arrived to ask for his blessing. The plan was to make giant posters of the male and female reproductive systems – in full colour and copied accurately from an encyclopaedia – and posters about emotional development and growing up after birth.

The Governor said OK and they were away. They checked things with me like, Why do sperm still come out after a vasectomy? and, How do you say uterus? and then made a project plan.

Getting ready took a month -- and what seemed a year’s worth of patience. The men argued, cursed one another, shouted at me and quit a million times. I was relentless about spelling and they cursed me, too. Nevertheless, on the day they were bold. David presented the overview, hosted speakers and fielded questions from the audience. Mostly no one knew the answers but no one minded and everyone was pleased with the afternoon. Some months later this thoughtful group of men decided to help people in other jails find a responsible life through education. That was when they founded STAYFREE.

STAY FREE, a for-profit company aiming to help prisons structure education and thereby reduce re-offending, was due to start trading upon the first man’s release six months hence. They felt the time and spent every free moment getting ready.

Led by David and Jerry they created a mission, a strategy, a business plan and a brochure. They wrote to regional job training centres to arrange basic education for each man upon release. They started work on a prison Job Fair and invited local companies to exhibit and speak. The aim was to discover what knowledge and skills would be required for work and growth in different industries and positions.

How could this happen without counselling?

The Governor had his own set of questions. You’re a teacher, he said. You started off and stayed with educational materials. We haven’t had to punish or reprimand any of these men since they started this type of class. I thought people need counselling or therapy to change attitudes and behaviours. How did this happen without counselling?

I explained that given any chance, people try to find self-esteem, love and work. It’s the way we are naturally. It’s the circle in which we all feel happy.

Two things are interesting here. One is that if any one of the three – self esteem, love or work – seems within reach, then optimism, energy, diligence, initiative and constructive plans can displace even such powerfully negative fears and feelings as anger, rage and despair. Also, once inside it, people drive relentlessly to complete the circle. That drive to feel complete, productive, admired and happy takes on a separate life and becomes priority.

I aimed to help the men find Work because I knew that for most, self-esteem and love weren’t easily within reach. Inquiry materials would do the trick because they’re the most efficient way to spark interest and release talent. From there, growth followed a predictable pattern from work to feeling competent, from competence to confidence and pride, from self-esteem to reflection, inner life to wishing for community and on from there to the ever-lasting hope for love. It’s in the genetic makeup; part of how we survive. Once started, given any chance at all, we all go down those roads.

STAY FREE was born in the midst of prison misery when purpose took over and nourished hope. Few of the STAY FREE men noticed their surroundings. They had much to accomplish, and a clear picture of the self-respecting life they’d lead once free.

This isn’t at all surprising. Many events dictate whether a person grows up productive or takes detours. What's important here is that at any age and no matter how long a person has taken scary dead ends, most people accept any opportunity to live a circle of Love, Work and Self-Esteem. And, even when love isn't on the horizon, respect plus properly structured education can be a path to Work and Self-Esteem for nearly everyone.

So after all, the Governor said, from Machine Sense to STAY FREE was not a long journey for the men to make. Love and Work had been there waiting, all along.

Dear President Obama,

You yourself are beautifully educated and know the significant difference in outcome between memorizing for a test and developing questions, discussing ideas and managing investigations. Certainly you will guide your own children in the latter, confident in the knowledge that reflective people are more open to ideas and more likely to make informed choices. And as our President, you know that progress in education could make every cent spent on reducing crime and improving health more effective by orders of magnitude, while hackneyed practices will exacerbate the dangerous lack of analysis that characterizes and paralyzes so much of our population. Still, you propose the tired, failed practices.

I trust the integrity of your intentions. However, may I say respectfully that I think you don’t know the right questions to ask in this field - which means you can’t discern the right problem to solve and therefore lack a basis for deciding what to do.

The right problem to solve how to channel every person’s inbuilt drive to raise questions and pursue them; that is, the innate drive to learn and work. This is the most efficient, profitable road to reducing and preventing disaffection – and ultimately to a more reflective society. Furthermore it costs a great deal less than what we’re doing now and students become better educated virtually 100% of the time they are in class.

Why isn't this prominent in the public education debate? Myths have the whip hand. Here are the details.


Myth
Reading, writing and arithmetic are the basic skills of education.

Reality
The basic skills for learning are observation and documentation, conversation and visual imaging, music, pattern and design, mechanics and invention – traits that develop as a partnership between nature and environment yet very importantly have no time constraint and so can come into bud at any age.

These are the skills that so many children in silent, still or angry homes don’t develop. So, going to a practical setting, when you hand a teenage non-reader some simple text, but he hasn’t got the learning foundation in place, he can’t read the text no matter how simple the words. The teacher determines it’s a matter of will or ignorance and either gives him a young child’s book or alerts his counselor and parents, or both. The adolescent is mortified and frustrated; if he lacks place in a family, he’s angry and he acts up. It isn’t a choice; it’s how we’re built.

But you have to know that, and about the mechanisms, and how to recognize the signs when someone lacks the pre-literacy basics. You have to know, too, the pivotal role that tools, beauty, pattern and the search for reality play in preparedness before you can pave the way for reading, writing, computation, analytical thinking, problem solving and informed judgment.

Myth
Some people don’t want to learn and some people can’t learn but teachers and learning-to-learn programs can help.

Reality
Learning is inborn. You can’t teach people to learn and you can’t stop people learning.

Learning is the survival drive that helps us satisfy the need to answer questions, beat the competition and get as close as possible to feeling happy. So you cannot teach people to learn and you can’t stop people learning. You can create the environment within which people channel learning, and you can help people switch learning to a constructive path.

Think about it: babies are instinctively curious and always exploring. Toddlers are always asking why, although no one has told them which why questions are best. No two kids ask the same questions, and if you address the question, they’re rapt. How could that disappear?

The answer is, it can’t – and never does. No matter how long someone has been on a dark side road – no matter if the person has no love or support, no matter what age and even if the person is illiterate and innumerate - given any opportunity to follow up on a constructive idea, preferably one arising from one’s own question, that person will find work, feel proud and search for love. What’s more, that person will learn to read and write, will take care of himself, pay attention to health messages and watch out for those in his circle. That’s not only true; you have to work very hard to make it otherwise.

Per se you cannot teach people to learn, and any money spent on such duff stuff is good money after bad right down the drain.


Myth
It costs a lot of money to educate people properly.

Reality
It costs hardly any money to educate people.

You can make a start with a spider plant, blank paper and fine quality well-sharpened pencils, and if that’s all the money you have for materials, the students will find their own questions and progress their own education.

Many other simple things provide an environment within which people find questions and a structure for following up. But you have to know why you use a spider plant yet not a rubber tree, for example, and which students need observation training to reawaken the visual system before turning to the plant. You need to be a diagnostician specializing in the field of human learning.

Cost is negligible. It wouldn’t take a fifth of current expenditure to redress and prevent disaffection across more than 90% of the population.

Myth
You have to fix the family before kids will progress academically.

Reality
Once a person finds work, the person pursues it, irrespective of the setting.

The two basic drivers of human existence are love and work. In the absence of love, people pursue work, and when they’re strong enough in that domain they go out in search of love. So you may spend a lot of money working one to one on families, and that has its benefits, but the opportunity to find work at school will accomplish as much for a fraction of the cost.

Learning and work help us stave off boredom and keep our spirits up if we are lacking love; they equip us to complete, develop inventions, and find love – three driving forces for all human beings. We need only let in the light and air.


Myth
Preparing to teach is essentially about learning theory and lesson planning.

Reality
Teacher education is about how to choose materials and help individuals progress.

Would you like to visit a doctor whose primary training was in administration of medicines but who hadn’t been trained to know how they act on the human system?

If you want to reduce and prevent disaffection, the choice of materials is more important than what you say and much more important than what you ask students to do. But you have to be professionally educated in human development and learning in order to prepare instructional practice.

* * *

Here’s an example of the ideas in practice.

Twenty Men in Jail, Twenty Dollars to Spend

I worked in a medium security prison with twenty men (all together once a week for four hours each time). They had always been learners, of course, only they’d been learning how to cope with an empty life and how to get better at being criminals – which, as they pointed out, they had not done as well as they might have liked.

But once they had started enjoying conversation, and following up systematically on ideas about mechanics, pattern and design - which began during our first moment together thanks to the materials I put before them – it wasn’t long before they started inventing.

At the start many among these men couldn’t read, write or do sums very well, so the materials I used were line drawing images without any numbers or words. Yet at the end of two weeks the men proudly mounted an exhibition of their work – illustrated and labeled with dimensions and correct terms. Because they were proud, and wanted to do things right, they had mastered the ruler and compass, checked one another’s spelling, used a dictionary, and learned to use Word.

By the third month, they were studying about human development. They’d given an illustrated lecture to the prison population about how people can get to be criminals, and they’d formed a company called Stay Free which would teach prison officials why education for questions could help reduce re-offending. And they formed a Father’s Group to consider how they might keep their own children from becoming lawless. And they stood together at the phone, helping one another say to their children, I love you.

They were waking early to do their prison jobs so they could meet more often; they ironed their shirts, stood tall, and had become teachers to a second group of prisoners. They formed a company, Stay Free, to teach prison officials why questions stop re-offending.

Virtually No Cost

The materials I used cost just a few dollars in all. There were photocopied images, some remainder bits of beautiful art paper, geometry tools, fine pencils, quality technical drawing pens, extra-blade pencil sharpeners and a professional eraser, the backs of writing pads and X-Acto knives. Not much when you consider the nation’s education budget. For research into questions, students consulted one another and used the computer. Later the prison librarian joined the team, helping with research and the composing of letters with questions to experts.

Do I see your eyebrows go up at the thought of X-Acto knives in prison? It is notable that over an entire year not one item went missing though nothing was locked away. That includes the X-Actos.

But you have to know which images will bypass resistance and tap the drive to raise questions and prefer constructive behavior. And you have to know how to help individuals progress. That is, when someone is stuck, do you offer a solution, suggest possibilities, work one to one, or let the person rest until something suggests itself. This is a critical instructional judgment that depends on the nature of the work plus an accurate diagnosis of the learner’s physical, mental and emotional state at that moment in time.

* * *

The Cost Effective Solution: Equipping Teachers to Redress and Prevent Disaffection

Does the work kids do in school lead to the outcomes promised by public officials and publishers? Are teachers educated as diagnosticians, equipped to choose materials aligned with natural patterns of human learning and brain development – people who are equipped to help individuals progress?

No on both counts. The right problem to solve is that educational practice doesn’t often center on a student’s own questions. And by now it must be apparent that the most cost-effective solution to reducing and preventing disaffection is equipping teachers to do that.

Of course it would mean systemic change that has implications for professional education, instructional practice and assessment. Perhaps that’s why vested interests raise scare tactics at any mention of redrawing teacher preparation. What about all the people already teaching? What about all the teacher training programs already out there? Anyway, there aren’t enough people who would be interested in teaching as a behavioral science; there is no one to write and deliver the new teacher education curricula; and a teacher corps, thus educated, would demand extortionate pay.

Well, it’s good money after bad to fix a broken, outmoded system that’s been breaking hearts and draining resources we need for health care for years now. Still, reason won’t dispel the objections, so you’ll need ammunition to return the fire. Here is some.

Given the chance to gain a professional education in the art and science of developing human potential and equipped with highly developed diagnostic skill, you’d have lines around the block for every place on teacher education programs, and first in line would be those among today’s teachers who hate how little they know about why so many kids slip through the net. Virtually all people who teach are well meaning and want to help pupils fulfill promise yet most teachers don’t know why their good will and new methods make no change.

The enhanced curriculum for teacher education is intellectually rigorous, invigorating and exciting. It incorporates the best today’s teacher education modules, especially where people study by the case method. And, you can deliver the basics in one month to teachers in training or those in service – this has been done many times already - and if need be, people can learn and then teach one another.

Given the chance to correctly prepare those who will take our young people’s minds into their hands, scientists and science professors will line up to join education faculty on curriculum development teams. They would do this because it would help them understand the inexplicable failure of educational policy to date, it would help America recover, it would be creative and it would be very interesting indeed.

The system needs one teacher for every ten or twelve people born; people who decide to teach can do the sums. Properly equipped to do the job and sanctioned to do it, the nonmonetary rewards will be boundless. Anyway anyone who chooses to work in the public sector knows that it’s fair pay and excellent benefits. There is no reason to imagine that professionally educated teachers would thereby become extortionate.

* * *

Mr. President: A person’s own question is the wellspring for constructive behavior, reflection, and informed decision making - and that’s irrespective of age, background or current woes. So how to channel the innate drive to raise questions and follow up on them is right problem, and equipping teachers to do that is the most cost-effective solution.

You know that; a machine doesn’t run efficiently unless the parts are fit for purpose. It would be a relief to great teachers who can’t abide the insidious test preparation and it will preclude the misery that families and society face when disaffected young people turn to destructive roads. It would save all the money we waste on endless tweaks to superficial issues of form that have not one thing to do with whether a person learns, and it would preclude the disappointment teachers and parents feel who are ever hopeful that the next quick fix will do the trick.

It would ensure that legions of Americans will become observant, talk together more, pay attention to health messages, enjoy the pleasure of improved self-esteem and reflect on decisions they make for themselves and others. I hope you will see that revamping teacher education is the starting point, which, as with any educational practice – incurs little cost. Just as in schools, the difference is in the materials you choose, what you ask people to do, and how you help them progress – not a thing to do with how much you spend along the way.