NCJ Number
188634
Journal
Journal of Correctional Education Volume: 52 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2001 Pages: 33-38
Editor(s)
Carolyn Eggleston
Date Published
March 2001
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article is part two on how post-modern thinking is appearing at the limits of correctional theorizing and discussions regarding post-modernism and correctional education.
Abstract
Part one of this paper (December 2000) described the struggles, across a number of disciplines, to represent the world in which people live. The term post-modern was introduced to describe the contemporary experience brought about by the radical transformation of society by telecommunications technology. Part two of this paper illustrates how post-modern thinking is appearing closer to correctional theorizing. Challenges as to the nature of knowledge, reality, justice, and education have come from divergent social and intellectual movements that have formed an unintentional alliance in an assault on grand, unifying narratives and foundational thought. Traditional structures of thought and feeling have been eroded. To conceptualize these shifts in knowledge and the order of things and to address the issue of the social, contextual qualities of reality, knowledge, justice, and education, new metaphors were called upon, such as, for justice, “justice with her eyes wide open.” The influence of these knowledge debates are considered for federally sentenced women in Canada, the Restorative Justice movement, and correctional education. In 1990, the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women produced the report, “Creating Choices.” The report recommended holistic, integrative programs and models of intervention responding to the multi-faceted, inter-related nature of a woman’s experience. Knowledge is based on mutual interactions and synergetic relationships. Restorative principles see crime in context encouraging mutuality and providing opportunities for dialogic encounters between teacher and student recognizing the student as present and different. The knowledge shift provides grounds for educating persons as subjects not objects. Because our knowledge base is growing exponentially, students cannot be taught everything there is to know. Students must learn to think critically and teachers must facilitate this thinking. Teachers must have opportunities to explore and develop curricula as and when needed. For the purposes of this paper, this is not to deny the possibility of a general framework of correctional education internationally, but to challenge the premises that it is possible and desirable to implement a standardized curriculum only to limit the flexibility and capability of responding to the different needs of an individual. There is a move away from descriptions of characteristics and skills into subject positions realized through creative connections with others. References