Last term I spent every Monday afternoon at the Windsor Correctional Facility in Vermont. As a Tucker Foundation volunteer for the Prison Project, I taught inmates how to play the piano. My friends and my family thought that I was insane. Wouldn't it be better to work with those more deserving of my time, effort, and attention, they asked? What about the needs of the underprivileged, the poor, children, the elderly, or the ill? Why instruct convicted felons in something as frivolous as music?
As students and intellectuals, it is all together too easy for us to debate the issues of prison over-crowding or the national crime rate from a distance without considering the fact that the inmates in question are people and that as such, they have stories to tell. By listening to their stories, we learn. The inmates know a side of life which, with any luck, most of us in the Dartmouth community will never experience. Many times, I was shocked by the inmates' complete disregard for the rights, feelings, circumstances, and individuality of other people. Their crass humor and captious attitude towards life grated on my sense of youthful, romanticized idealism. At other times, however, they shocked me with their unpredictable insight, openness, forward thinking, and even their motivation and drive to change and improve their lives.
As tutors, my fellow volunteers and I were responsible for transporting ourselves to the prison, creating personalized lesson plans, and teaching the inmates our various subjects in the relaxed environment of the correctional facility library. As for the progress of my students: the prospect of an inmate becoming proficient on the piano was remote. It was also highly unlikely that learning a musical instrument would assist them in their attempts to reacclimate themselves to society. What was important, however, was the discipline, the focus, and the concentration the inmates acquired in practice and the feeling of success which came to them with the realization of a difficult passage or of an entire piece. The emphasis of the inmate's learning was directed at the pride and the sense of accomplishment derived through diligence and persistence. The piano was simply an instrument, a tool, or a means by which this reaction was attained.
Volunteering for the Prison Project was a tremendously positive experience. As students, we are in constant danger of falling into a narrow-minded, academic, idealistic mentality which, while beautiful, is both impractical and unattainable. From their somewhat cynical view of life, it was obvious that conversations with the inmates were held in a state penitentiary, not Academia, USA and that the points made in these conversations were grounded in reality not in utopian ethics. Pragmatically speaking, then, the bottom line is that the inmates at the prison will eventually be released into our communities, and when they are, I sincerely hope that they will have acquired the skills necessary to function as contributing members of society.
