From
“The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
10
December
When
I thought of going to work as a teacher in a state prison my imagination,
perhaps understandably, 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 Rehabilitation 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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