Case Study Based on “The Grace of Silence: a Memoir” by Michele Norris
The memoir by Michele Norris touches upon various modern problems, the most topical of which is, of course, racism and discrimination in the past and at present. It might seem that in the 21st century with the democratic values being in their prime, there is no space for such destructive phenomena; however, as the author repeatedly stresses, they are still present within different ethnic and social groups of the U.S. population, though not readily discussed (Norris 2010). Thus, speaking in detail about one of the multiple sides of racism would be a logical topic for a paper. However, I would like to attract your attention to another issue mentioned in the book. In particular, this is education of juvenile inmates. According to Norris (2010), her uncle Joe took up a pilot project aimed at teaching young prisoners, “the assignment [that] would be hell on earth for most people.” The focus of the given paper will be the state of educational affairs regarding juvenile inmates in a modern society as well as possible solutions to the most-pressing problems in the sphere.
It is obvious that nobody will ever doubt the importance of education and its influence on the quality of life. One’s job, residence, one’s health and, perhaps even happiness – all of these aspects will definitely depend on the education one receives. Juvenile prisoners, comparing with the other students, significantly fall behind in educational process, and the time they spend behind bars is crucial for preparing them to return to society as law-abiding citizens with no inclination for recidivism, able to overcome the future challenges and, furthermore, build the democratic society and fight for civil rights (Coley and Barton 2006). The idea was fully realized and supported by Michele’s uncle, who once and again stressed the significance of acquiring proper values and active participation in the country’s political life, urging his students to fight for voting rights (Norris 2010). Statistics shows that education during the sentence period is, beyond doubt, critical, because over half of state prison inmates drop out of school before entering correctional facility (Cate 2010).
Generally speaking, while state officials claim to be committed to providing proper education to all children and spend taxpayers’ money for improving public schools, education for an entire subclass of children and adolescents – those incarcerated in prisons – is still suffering. Despite the fact that these children are entitled to receive an individually-tailored education which is supposed to be equal to that of their nonincarcerated peers, they receive barely any education at all. The primary causes of such tendency are, obviously, staff inconsistencies, lack of political will, and budget shortages (Cate 2010). For example, statistical data obtained during the period from 1990 to 2000 showed that proportion of prison staff capable of providing education fell from 4.1 to 3.2 percent of the total staff (Coley and Barton …