From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
6 December
When I thought of going to work as a teacher in a state
prison my imagination, perhaps understanbably, went a little goofy. I was
convinced that my paltry book smarts wouldn’t stand a chance against all their vaunted
street smarts. I vividly imagined myself standing at the board trying to
explain how to add 7 and 4 without taking off your shoes and socks, and in the
process get a very sharp pencil jammed into my carotid artery. This imaginative
construct, of course, concluded with the very real possibility of my sinking to
the floor in an ever-widening puddle of my own blood as I hit the
garage-door-opener alarm on my belt in the vain hope that the cops would waddle
from hither and yon to my defense.
Needless to say, nothing like that ever happened - eventually
common sense kicked in and I concluded that I’d probably do just fine if I saw
to it that my classroom was a fun place to be. That is, I started my teaching
career with the California Department of Corrections and Rehibilitation with
the following marching orders from me to me, very consciously stated and
hopefully enough to do the trick: “a laughing inmate is not a stabbing
inmate!”
Simple, isn’t it?
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