| The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of men incarcerated at a state correctional facility concerning their educational experiences, their perceptions of the relationship between these experiences and their incarceration, and what they perceived could have been done in their educational experiences to prevent them from being incarcerated. In particular, the study focused on violence perpetrated by the system against students and what role this violence as a tool of systemic domination played in the participants' incarceration. Given this information, the study then investigated things that could have been done in the schools which might have changed the educational progression, for these subjects, from school to prison. Guiding this research was the idea that the public schools act as a feeder system for the prisons through the use of punitive systems of behavior control, ostracism, restrictive labeling, and learning motivation. This is basically a continuation of earlier functions of the schools when students were educated to become the rulers of society or the laborers. Now with the need for untrained labor decreasing, those students formerly channeled into the low-cost labor pool are channelled into the prisons. Two pilot studies were conducted for this research. One developed writing, drawing, and discussion activities within a multicultural/democratic English as a Second Language high school classroom. The second pilot used the autobiographical interview method with teachers to look at how power and control operate within the school system. Ideas from the two pilot studies were combined to develop this study which used the basic structure of autobiography within a series of writing exercises, journaling, and small-group discussions instead of interviews. A profile was created for each participant. From the profiles, a number of shared experiences of dominance were developed including the experience of being “otherized,” of discipline to cause pain and deprivation, of dehumanization, and of systemic dominance. A number of recommendations to improve schooling by developing democratic, caring, multiculural classrooms was also discussed. |