Reviewer Bani Sodermark. Bani has a Ph.D in mathematical physics and has been a teacher of physics and mathematics at the university level in both India and Sweden. For the last decade, her interests have been spirituality, healthy living and self-development. She has written a number of reviews on Amazon. Bani is a mother to two children.
Author:Elaine Leeder
Publisher:Ebooks
Unbound
ISBN:978-1-938288-02-9
With
Different Eyes
This book highlights primarily the way the
American society treats its outlaws by incarcerating them in
circumstances that are demeaning and dehumanizing. The author, Dr.
Elaine Leeder, who is a social worker, a therapist at mental
hospitals and one who has worked with alcohol and drug addicts, got
interested in teaching courses at the Elmira correctional center,
while on a visit there with a class of students that she taught. Some
years later, she moved to California as the dean of Social Sciences
at Sonoma State University and started to revitalize the prison
education programs at San Quentin State Prison. In this book, she
reports her experiences of teaching the inmates and preparing them to
meet the outer world, of the inmates’ backgrounds that got them
there, the precautions to be taken while dealing with them and the
life stories of a selected few.
In the telling of her story,
she challenges a number of assumptions that today’s society accepts
as self-evident. The commonest of these is that criminals, once
convicted, are not worthy of a second chance. For Elaine Leeder,
however, there exists another credo that is a part of the title of
this book, viz., “Humanity has no bars”. It is a credo that led
her into getting involved in this education project, and she sees the
erstwhile felons as the human beings, they so deeply know that they
are. She sees the nascent possibilities within them that blossom
forth during their discussions in class, the inherent understanding
of Life’s workings from having experienced its dark side.
In
Dr. Leeder’s own words “Once inside, I have learned about the
real people with real stories, and reasons for doing what they
did.
“In this book, I will tell you some of these stories.
For the most part, they are aware of and disturbed by what they did.
Most are remorseful for what they did and want to make amends to the
victims, their families and the community they have harmed.”
The
text is arranged as follows. After an explanation of how her interest
in prison education was kindled, she relives her teaching experiences
at San Quentin prison. A group of Lifers there, asked her to
lead a group called “New Leap of Life” and she mentions the
enthusiasm with which the inmates participated as they partook of the
benefits of education. She dwells in particular, on some explicit
cases drawn from the following ethno-religious groups:
African-American background, Buddhist, Jewish, the last being her own
ethnicity. The last chapter is based on her reading of why the
American prison is the way it is and where it is headed. These future
prospects according to Dr. Leeder, are not positive, in fact, they
are extremely bleak. She also compares the American prison system to
those of the European and Canadian systems.
This book has been
written with passion and is a truly uplifting read. The stories of
the inmates doing Life are deeply touching, one sees them as
people of above average intelligence, who have landed in a painfully
difficult situation and who truly appreciate efforts made by others
towards their rehabilitation in society. But there is more, prison
inmates, having been through what they have, have acquired a unique
perspective of Life and life-skills, that those who live outside,
would do well to learn and even emulate. Truths that would take weeks
to teach most university students, can appear self-evident to
incarcerees, at least to those who are attending the education
programs. It is Dr. Leeder’s sensitivity to this dimension that
makes this book the treasure that it is.
The message carried
by this book is truly needed today. Shutting people out of society is
not a viable alternative, as this is a never-ending and ultimately,
an extremely expensive proposition. Exercising compassion and
empathy, a la Elaine Leeder, is a better option that should be
considered more often by the powers that be.
Strongly
recommended.
Follow Here To Purchase My Life with Lifers: Lessons For A Teacher: Humanity Has No Bars
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