by James Winborne

Created on: December 17, 2008

Why public schools resemble prisons:why children suffer

It became painfully obvious to me in my Junior year of high school, while on a school trip to a well known prison in the next state, that there was "Not" a whole lot of differences between the two institutions . My class had the honor of being one of the the first classes of high school students to be a part of the "Scared Straight "Program.

The program was designed to for inner city youth, as a way of deterring them for coming to such a place as prison. Coming from Brooklyn, this was a daunting task for the New York Board of Education. It was to my surprise that, the teachers were not surprised that the students, were not surprised at the state of operations inside of the prison.

All institutions must have uniformity and structure if they are going to have any level of successful operations. As we walked into the prison the first thing we heard was the familiar sound of a ringing bell. This bell was as an indication of what was to be the next event. We knew that we were a long way from home room, so this ring must be for the pupils in this particular institution. Maybe it was time for their lunch, or time for general assembly.

For the most part, we spent most of the day looking for people who we knew ,or heard was locked up there.We spent three hours of having inmates yelling in our faces, with all types of profanity and sexuality explicit threats about what they were going to do to some of my fellow male class mates, should they ever end up there. Most of their dissertation was about the routine of getting up every morning and going to the mess hall to eat, then going back to their specific holding places or job responsibilities until time for lunch. From there they would go to the yard until it was time to lock down again, which they stayed until it was time for dinner. It appeared to me that it was a routine for robots.Locked in a system that was designed for correction, but had metaphor into a modern day plantation, with a work force that no longer has master's name but a numeric identinfication as property of the state.

I don't think that the program have the success it desired. On the way back to Brooklyn all we did was talk about how we were already in prison, just without the bars. As far as we could see, School was a prerequisite or training ground for prison. The warden was the principle. And as fate would have it , one of the correctional officers in the prison, use to be a security guard at our

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