9 Summary of Session 2

During this session you have looked at how and why schemes for educating prisoners spread across the penal estate before 1850. You also looked at patterns of inclusion and exclusion: just because arrangements had been made to teach prisoners to read and write, this did not mean that all were allowed to attend lessons.

In this session you also explored the many ways by which instruction could take place. While prison officials initially adopted a range of strategies, increasingly the penal environment and prison discipline determined what was possible, facilitating the rise of prison schools. Prisoners were organised into classes and were taught by paid (and often qualified) teachers in classrooms, at appointed times.

You should now be able to:

• discuss the expansion of educational provision in prisons
• discuss how the penal environment shaped forms of learning in the prison
• use a timetable to organise your study time.

To what extent did adjustments made to enable delivery of education within the prison compromise the value and meaning of instruction? Were prisons ever suitable environments for education? You will consider these questions further in the next session when you will go inside the prison school, to see what prisoners were taught, how they were taught it, and how they responded to the instruction they were given.

You can now go to Session 3 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .