Monday, March 14, 2011

Rehabilitative Blogging


So a school has raised the literacy rates amongst its boys by the use of blogging, from single figures on tests to over 60%.
This may not be the educational Golden Bullet but it is clearly an avenue worth exploring in inculcating an interest in literacy amongst that most recalcitrant of audiences, young males.
Prisoners are, I keep being told, famously illiterate. And I recall a handful of people defending my initial foray into blogging on rehabilitative grounds. Hmmm, is it too great a leap to connect these two points?
If illiterate prisoners are more likely to re-offend (a standard claim), largely due to an inability to gain employment, then should prisons not note this startling educational news? And finally - finally! - begin to turn the attention of the managerial neuron to the rehabilitative possibilities of the Net?

3 comments:

  1. From the small amount of experience of prison education (ie my mother worked in it for a while) my understanding is that half the problem is not the quality of what is being taught or the enthusiasm of the students, but the lack of consistency as prisoners get shuffled around, budgets get relocated. So in that sense I can imagine something that consistently gives students something to work on would be greatly beneficial.

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  2. Excellent idea.

    Just goes to show how young people learn, not by rote, testing or by the national curricula (these things have put many of them off learning), but they learn by experimenting with things they enjoy doing i.e the net.

    It is such a well known fact in psychology that children learn by playing, why they effectively knock it out of them at formal schooling, I don't know.

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  3. An empty hand is no lure for a hawk.

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