Let Prisoner's Take College Courses By John Lennon

Although examining art requires a huge knowledge, my intention in this essay is to analyze a piece of art, besides lyrics and the context, I’m going to examine it by following the steps presented by Alain de Botton.

Alice Goffman, the speaker in this TED Talk, does a great job reaching out to her audience in a great number of ways. Her purpose in this TED Talk titled, “How We’re Priming Some Kids for College, and Others for Prison,” is to grab the attention of all people, but it is directed towards the younger generations, to show them that they have to work together in order for change to be made. The change would be to work together to help end the problem of mass incarceration; to help completely rebuild the Criminal Justice System. Throughout her talk, Goffman uses examples of logos, ethos, and pathos to reach her audience in an effective way, and to inform them of the problems going on with the United States Criminal Justice System.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

“How did we get here? How is it that our civilization, which rejects hanging and flogging and disembowelling, came to believe that caging vast numbers of people for decades is an acceptably humane sanction?”, asks Adam Gopnik, a writer for The New Yorker in “The Caging of America”. So how did we get here? What has it done to our society? Gopnik elaborates on these questions and many more as he explicates the history of prisons, the convolution of their systems, and the detrimental consequences that prisoners are left to face. Although Gopnik undeniably articulates, “we need to take more care,” he lacks a concrete solution to the epidemic that is mass-incarceration. But in order for us to unearth this solution, we must first retrace the history of mass incarceration and reevaluate the egregious effects it has on our society.

Name: Lecturer: Course: Date of Submission: Mass incarceration in American Prisons Introduction More than 2.3 million Americans today are prisoners, a population that represents more than a quarter of the number of prisoners in the world. This means that 760 Americans in one hundred thousand are prisoners in America (Detotto and Pulina). The rise in prisoners’ numbers has sharply risen since 1980 with the cost of maintaining the prison going to over four hundred percent within the same period.

As stated above, Lagemann believes in the transformative power of a liberal arts education and believes that it should be available to everyone, including the prison population. She has experienced first hand, the immense value that a prison education program can provide for inmates and wishes to utilize the lessons learned at BPI to benefit all. BPI not only illustrates the effectiveness of a college prison program in decreasing dicividism rates, and ultimately decreasing the financial burden of an exploding prison population, it also highlights the importance of higher education for all and how BPI’s specific approach towards education can help more traditional colleges with their low completion rates.

From 1973 to 2000 the imprisonment rate in the U.S has increased by a multiple of four, while the actual crime rate saw no such increase over that period. (Visher and Travis, 2003, p. 89-90) Historically, the prison system in America had always been marred with inadequacies and failures, specifically in rehabilitating prisoners. The significant increase in incarceration rates have put an even greater burden on the already inefficient prison system. In reality, the prison system does not actually function as a means of rehabilitating prisoners, and real purpose of the institute is to basically keep the “deplorables” of society away from the public eye. It serves as a tool to degrade members of society to the bottom of the social ladder and strip them of their most basic rights. For many prisoners, rehabilitation comes in the form of “corrections” which is largely characterized by the humiliation, abuse, and subjugation of inmates by correction officers. This form of rehabilitation is largely malicious and ineffective in its procedures and outcomes. Often times inmates, leave prison more emotionally and physically damaged that they were upon entrance as a consequence of the dismal conditions they were subjugated to. The current high rates of recidivism have testified to the fact that our prisons have failed as a deterrent. As a result, it must be

As many people know, there is no right to education in the constitution. In despite of this, there are many institutions in the United States that promote and encourage schooling and other educational programs. Since a constitutional right does not exist, it is considered a privilege to gain basic educational training or even higher learning. When considering education a privilege, the adequacy of and attainability to educational programs for many depleted Americans remains scanty. In result, prison education becomes a matter left in the hands of prison administrators.

As a society, it is our responsibility to educate ourselves to understand what’s at risk for a society that has a huge incarceration problem. In truTv show “Adam Ruins Everything, the host Adam Conover employs a combination of comedy, history and science to dispel widespread misconceptions about everything we take for granted” (Conover,

Whether guilty of crimes or innocent, our incarceration system is an issue that many activists rally around in terms of its success and promise in correcting and rehabilitating criminal behavior. So, to read letters and hear the voices of those who are living on the marginalized edges of our society, but who rarely have a voice in the issue that’s being nationally rallied around, is an uncommon circumstance that should be noted and have more attention and action drawn to. Their desire to educate themselves within the confines of a prison wall is real and heard by those of us who take time to spend their weekday evenings in the bottom of a church basement, sorting through donated books, and reading literary wish-lists of those who are incarcerated.

I remember very well, John Lennon; however, Mark David Chapman takes some recall, how many can say, why he did what he did. I remember Ronald Regan very well, John Hinckley it’s just a name, but why he did what he did, that is what is remembered.

Over centuries poetry has been considered a form of art. Some poets prefer to use specific form, style, and tone; however, others rejected the idea and simply wrote what they preferred. One demands simple things of a poem. A poem must have a meaning, an intellectual or an emotional impact on society, and some sort of rhythmic scheme. Today, is it easy to find poetry and poets everywhere. A very common place where poetry is found, but often overlooked, is in music. Lots of songwriters are known for their poetic qualities of the lyrics they write. “Imagine” is a song written and performed by John Lennon. It was released in October on the eleventh day, of the tenth month, in nineteen seventy one. The song was the best-selling solo of Lennon’s career. “The lyrics asks listener to imagine a world at peace without barriers or borders or divisiveness of religion or nationalities, as well as to consider that possibility that the focus of humanity should be living a life unattached to material possessions” writes John Lennon-Imagine lyrics meaning (1). It is unquestionable that the song is most certainly a form of poetry. One demands simple things of a poem. A poem must have a meaning, a logical message to society, an intellectual or an emotional impact, and some sort of rhythmic scheme.

Social criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in which it is written or received. Keeping this definition in mind, it is necessary to understand the political, cultural and economic environment in which Lennon the above famous words.

John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was released in October 1971. Imagine was the most successful single that Lennon produced and is perhaps the best song in music history for its strong message. He wrote this song during the climax of the Vietnam War as an anti-war song. At this time in history peace movements were popular because of all the wars happening that involved the country and its people. His song is timeless as its message still applies today. It is true that everyone wants peace, but this picture Lennon illustrates is a fantasy. The song Imagine is a fantasy imagination of John Lennon that pushes the ideology of communism through its resemblance to an unrealistic society.