Thursday, December 27, 2012

Intellectual Dead Zone



Blog entry 12/27/2012

I hope you all enjoyed my latest query about ambition and autodidactism, (teaching oneself). You may have seen through to the sub-test which is, fear that I cannot teach myself nor efficiently absorb novel information.  This impending deficiency, more than the shitty character of the lower half of the staff and inmate population, is what can make doing time difficult.

Based on the resentment expressed against educated, well-spoken or otherwise non-ghetto comported inmates I deduce that the system only tolerates fettered and degenerate minds.  If an inmate does not enter pre-fettered and degenerate then constant exposure to shitty people (both inmate and staff) and restriction of intellectual exercise cultivates a lowest common denominator inmate. Failing this, any expression of dignity will distinguish one as out-of-line with the expected failed person model and segregation pulls one to the deviant average expected. Yes, expected, demanded, even required, to progress through custody levels and achieve discharge of one’s sentence.

All the self-imposed intellectual exercises are proving to have a lack of progress.  This became evident when I returned to the music room, after a three year absence and quickly realized that every endeavor to learn the piano has stalled at the same low plateau.  Autodidactism has a limit and lessons are required to progress beyond that limit. I can assure you that brute force repetition does not convince the frontal lobe to accept – learn – any concepts beyond one’s autodidactic limit.

Oh, Chagrin for the intellectually under stimulated prisoner, Right? Yes, absolutely chagrin for the dormant and intellectually starved inmate.  There are many inmates that undertake self-study in everything from law to music to language to art to science, as well as learning a hobby / craft and physical fitness. Hobby crafts and physical fitness are learned by physical repetition, but everything else runs into the autodidactic limit soon after the first chapter fundamentals. No feedback from an instructor equals no understanding beyond preliminary fundamentals. This is what the tax payer pays for: intellectual dead zones that disable inmates from acquiring knowledge and ever participating meaningfully in the U.S. market place.

Inmates cooperating to learn is an intolerable conspiracy and the only outsiders (non-employees) allowed in are preachers.

To punctuate the point that prisons are drone factories I offer the crippled facility that I reside in to start; it is a corporately owned facility that operates with less program options than a civil facility.  Of these reduced programs the two computer user and one electronic vocations classes running two sessions per day were summarily closed this past spring.  Untouched were vocational janitorial class and construction safety flagger certification. 

Have I slipped past the event horizon of the cerebral black hole I am swirling around?

Write to me at jason.pecci@gmail.com and comment on the closing, and your feelings on the cerebral black hole analogy.

Jason

To get a grasp on what Jason is saying here please watch the movie “The Freedom Writers.” (Hilary Swank and Patrick Dempsey).This movie describes a lazy slovenly education system in some areas that not only mirrors the attitude of the prison system but actually is why our prison system is the largest in the world. This desire to keep inmates in that "intellectual dead zone," also is the reason there are a large number of recidivist. MEP

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