Professor Tsafrir Mor teaches in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University — but when he’s not in the lab or the lecture hall on campus, he can sometimes be found teaching in a very different type of classroom.
Mor is active in Arizona State University's Prison Education Program, and he and Joe Lockard co-edited a new book about the challenges — and opportunities — of teaching STEM courses in prisons.
The title of the book is simple: “STEM Education in U.S. Prisons” — but Mor’s vision is anything but.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: I wanted to start our conversation about this book with a quote from the book you write, science education in prisons represents an activist ethic that supports a shift in incarcerated subjectivity from governed subject to inquiring self, governed student.
TSAFRIR MOR: Absolutely so the sheer number of people that are incarcerated now in the U.S. is such that even before thinking about their specific needs. It represents such a large part of the population that collectively, it has lots of potential for our nation, for our economy, for the way that we live, which we now will look away and forget about sometimes for a very, very long time, sometimes forever. To me, that's a waste of human talent, experience and potential.
DINGMAN: So one of the things that you write about wanting to teach incarcerated folks is rationalist thought. I wonder if you could say what that phrase means to you, and what perspective you feel like incarcerated or formerly incarcerated folks might bring to the discipline of rationalist thought that is unique to their experience?
MOR: So in science, we are intrigued by certain patterns that we see, and what those patterns that we observe tell us about nature. So there is strong reliance on prediction based on cause and effect. I think that something that is lacking in the last few years from our public arena is this connection between facts and consequences.
To me, the importance of this type of thinking is something that comes through education. And of course, the sooner you start, the better. But actually, that's not something that has any kind of expiration data as far as when to do it. So I strongly believe in adult education, and I therefore strongly believe in education within the carceral system.
DINGMAN: You know, as you were saying, that I had the thought that incarcerated folks have a very different relationship with the idea of consequences than most people.
MOR: Yeah. So first and foremost, I have to say that when we get to the classroom, we try to disconnect the student from the person that is incarcerated and has committed crimes and is therefore bearing the consequences of former action.
Most of the people that do come to our program are people that realize that they have a chance to create a new beginning for themselves. Many of them have rather negative experiences with the education system or systems in their past, part of what we're trying to do is normalize the education environment for them and to give them a sense that they can actually be successful in such an environment.
DINGMAN: How do you try to counteract the potentially negative interactions that they've had with educational environments previously? What concrete steps do you take to change that relationship?
MOR: So the way that I approach my incarcerated students is in principle, not very different from the way that I approach my non incarcerated students, and that is to meet them where they are, so to actually make it clear that they are the authors of their educational outcomes.
So we are asking questions and waiting for them to answer. We are answering questions that they are posing us at some very often, we're asking them to ask us. We are also giving them something which we call a personal project. And at the end of the semester, they actually prepare a presentation. We actually do it.
Again, collaboratively with their off site mentors. So they create a storyboard because they don't have access to computers with their hand drawn pictures of what they want to be there. We find appropriate images, and we help them design the presentation, and they give the presentation in front of their peers. We actually also invite people from the prison, so the wardens are sometimes coming in, and so it's a great celebration.
DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, just to go back to that idea that you mentioned about treating the students as the authors of their own scholarship, you write, dominant elements of Western societies historically have marked out subordinated populations as less intelligent, less original, less rational, or less capable of absorbing scientific concepts and practices. Is that a dynamic that you have observed in your own teaching?
MOR: Of course, I mean, almost for some of them, many of the experiences that they have in classes they've never had before. And in fact, they were told that they cannot do it, that they don't know enough, that they are stupid, and that the kind of impression that our K-12 education system kind of instilled, in many cases, on them. So the fact that they are becoming experts in a particular topic and they teach others is, I think, transformative.
DINGMAN: There’s the systemic reasons that this population of students might not be accustomed to thinking about education as something that they have any kind of say in their relationship too. But then there are also the physical realities of the environment that they're in which are not tailored to the idea of them having agency or choice in the way that they move through their lives. I know you have experienced this through your own teaching in a supermax prison.
MOR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean physically that that was was apparent when we taught in the first few years, students that were incarcerated, students that were brought in a one at a time, shackled and handcuffed to to the classroom, and then were put in little enclosures that old metal enclosures that had the sides completely sealed and in the front And these kind of wire mesh bar system, and so they talk to us and to each other through those, those bars, and which essentially looks like small cages.
And it's very weird for the first, you know, five minutes, but within five minutes, those bars, almost literally melt, and you're forgetting that you're dealing with students that are separated from you by metal, and they're just students, and you're just a teacher and and the same dynamic that develops in a small classroom anywhere on the planet happens there.
