Comments on: Maximum Security Education

How Some Inmates Are Getting A Top-Notch Education Behind Bars

[randalds]

Sounds like an excellent program! It's a shame that it's only privately funded, but in this case it may be for the best. Here's hoping a philanthropist such as a Bill Gates here's of this and funds similar programs in other prison systems. The vast majority of prisoners in prison will get out someday and it's nice to know that there is at least one program that, as one prisoner said, teaches them to think, not just to react. No vocational rehab program does that. I mean after all, what good does it do to learn to make license plates when the only place they make them is in prison?

[cerya]

We have always known that education is the key. Imprisoning a body shouldn't imprison the mind to think better thoughts, to learn to address life in another way. Look at the statistics for those in our prisons and it is clear that the vast majority is uneducated, poor, and mostly Blacks. This story makes the point that we should be rehabbing prisoners and the best way to do that is through education, the best deterrent to crime. Yet we take the most disenfranchised people and deny them an education and fail to see the societal benefit in affirmative action.

[shnetha]

To start out most of the people that are in prison are not black. Everyone need a secound chance to make their life better and if we all could get it wee all would take it. S o do not knock them because they are taking that chance.

[warak1]

What about a student accepted at Bard and has to pay the entire amount for a 4 year education because they are middle class and do not qualify to get any money...or the student who is paying off loans at a state school...or the student paying their own way for a masters or doctorate...they did not commit any crime but come from a hard working family that earns a honest day wage to give their children a higher education at a college they want to attend...watching this segment raised my blood pressure to the extreme...it was tough to watch.

[maoriii-2009]

This expose is perhaps the single most important that I have ever viewed on CBS. The story exposes one of the greatest myths of our modern world. That the capability for higher learning is the sole province of a priviledged few or the specially advantaged upper classes of our society. (By higher learning I mean the capacity to discuss concepts such as freedem and existence.) I am absolutely delighted by the program at Bard and would welcome a push to develop programs of a similar nature throughout the country. One of the greatest disparities in our institutions of higher learning is the racial divide in liberal studies programs. This program illustrates the fact that anyone who has the desire and the means (both at home and in the classroom), neither aspect being more important than the other, can achieve to such a degree as to wish to read and understand Kant or Husserl in the native language. This is remarkable and ought to be encouraged by a society that proclaims to hold progress and vitality in high regard.

[bartlb75]

So if I rob a bank to pay for my student loan debt, can I pursue my Doctorate through Bard? I understand the concept, but in reality, what does this say about hard working, law abiding students who are rejected admission to Bard? Tough sell in my opinion.

[clewis1817]

Re the article on Bard College:
Wonderful, so proud of Bard & so ashamed of our representatives who refused the use of our money to enrich society by enriching the lives of the guys and women who need it so much.Never ddreamed a national program would tackle such a story & thrilled that you folks did.
Catherine Lewis