How very ironic that as I'm reading about some incredible theater work going on at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Ky., I'm also reading a report by the Justice Policy Institute that since the prison building boom in the 1980's, the number of black men behind bars has grown fivefold in the past 20 years, to the point that more black men are in jail or prison than are enrolled in colleges or universities. In the same 20-year period, the number of Americans of all races in jail or prison quadrupled, while the number of all races attending colleges and universities rose 22 percent.
Talk about skewed investments.
I asked my neighbor how things were going in his classroom this year. Not so good, he said. He has 35 students in each of his middle school classes. Imagine trying to do science experiments with 35 students. I can't. I had trouble 12 years ago, which is why I'm no longer teaching high school.
So across the United States and throughout Oregon there are larger class sizes, cuts in field trips, limited teacher preparation and training time, outdated curriculum, limited course electives, and of course, cuts in those "non-core" subjects like art. And all of these cuts mean not only less opportunities for everyone, but higher dropout rates and less enrollment in colleges.
In a recent article in an Oregon Education Association publication, an Oregon English teacher talked about the increase in dropouts. "Many of the programs - like shop and art - that keep some kids coming to school have been cut. These programs may not be considered `core subjects,' but they hold the interest of students that might otherwise fall through the cracks. They keep kids coming to school so I can teach them English."
That may be true, but those non-core subjects do a lot more than hold a student's interest.
Take that program at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex. Shakespeare Behind Bars, run by Curt Tofteland, producing director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, involves dozens of inmates who dig into Shakespeare and in the process accept some responsibility for past actions, listen and learn from others, and acknowledge that maybe they share some traits with characters they don't like.
Lavassa Anderson is an example. He might get parole in 25 years, but not until then. He did some very bad things before he went to prison. Anderson is playing Laertes in this year's production of Hamlet. He finds Laertes cowardly because he abandons his commitments and friends and doesn't know how to fight. But when he thinks of his crimes he says, "As far as being stupid and treacherous. I guess I can relate to him in that way."
When he first entered prison, Anderson found God and became a fierce minister. But over the past year, he says that he's learned from other members of the Shakespeare program, particularly from another inmate who is openly gay, that he shouldn't be so quick to pass judgment. "I still don't agree with that lifestyle," he says, "but it was wrong of me to close (that inmate) out, wrong not to find room for him in my heart."
I couldn't help but think of Anderson and how art is working incremental changes in his life when I read a recent New York Times editorial by Thomas Friedman, on how to repair the "jagged hole in the wall of civilization" post 9/11. He wrote that "... imposing norms and rules on ourselves gives us the credibility to demand them from others. It gives us the credibility to demand the rule of law, religious tolerance, consensual government, self-criticism, pluralism, women's rights and respect for the notion that my grievance, however deep, does not entitle me to do anything to anyone anywhere."
Amy Richard has lived in Ashland since 1990, was Revels editor at The Tidings for three years, and since June of 1998 has been media relations director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
By Amy Richard
