Session 3: Inside the prison school

Introduction

In this third session, you will now go inside the prison school to discover what was taught and how it was taught in the years between 1823 and 1855. Superficially at least, both curriculum and pedagogy (teaching methods) mirrored those in elementary schools outside the prison. However, the penal environment, and especially evolving views about the causes of crime, led to some divergence.

You will also look at what some prisoners said about their learning. The modern prison was designed to suppress the agency of the prisoner (that is, his or her capacity to act independently). However, the voices of prisoners can still be found scattered throughout the sources. In this session, you will listen to them, discuss their authenticity, and begin to consider the meaning of education to the individual.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

• understand the ways in which prisoners’ experiences of education can be recovered and the challenges of interpreting what they mean
• understand what was taught in the prison school, how it was taught, and why it was taught
• understand the intentions of educators and how the methods they used to instruct prisoners affected the usefulness and value of the education received by individuals.

Figure 1 The schoolroom for boys in the probationary ward at Parkhurst Prison for Juveniles in 1847. Because the boys were undergoing a probationary period, they were accommodated in separate cells and taught in a partitioned schoolroom. Those who behaved well were invited to sit in the open desks at the front of the room.

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This black and white illustration depicts a high-ceilinged room, with about forty boys seated in tiered cubicles against the rear wall. In the left foreground stands a schoolmaster, pointing with a stick at a board on an easel. A few more boys are just visible at two rows of open desks along the side walls.

Figure 1 The schoolroom for boys in the probationary ward at Parkhurst Prison for Juveniles in 1847. Because the boys were undergoing a ...

What follows is, at times, a complicated story, which might well challenge some of your preconceptions about education and schools. Our case study, Lincoln Castle Gaol, should help to bring some of the threads together. Watch the next video now, in which Rosalind Crone charts the evolution of the school for prisoners at Lincoln. What were prisoners taught at Lincoln and how did they respond to efforts to teach them? Write down some brief notes on the ideas presented in the video.

Download this video clip.Video player: boc_pre_1_week3_theschool.mp4

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Transcript

[GENTLE MUSIC]

ROSALIND CRONE

This was a day room, located on the ground floor of the Victorian prison at Lincoln Castle Gaol. In the late 1840s, it was used as a schoolroom. You can see a representation of that behind me here. We have prisoners using slates and pencils to do their work, and the stern figure of the chaplain standing over them.

Schooling wasn't a consequence of the renovations of the Gaol, nor of the imposition of the separate system of prison discipline here. Rather, it was a continuation of what had been going on before.

In the mid 1820s, criminal prisoners in the old Gaol had been encouraged to teach each other how to read and write. And the chaplain had been allowed to supply them with schoolbooks.

In the 1830s, the turnkeys or prison officers began to help the prisoners in their efforts to learn. And by 1837, the matron had begun to teach the female prisoners.

A turnkey interviewed by the home office prison inspector on his first visit to Lincoln Gaol in 1837 explained that some of the prisoners delighted in learning, while others found it a bore. Older prisoners were less inclined to learn and were more difficult to teach. In general, the prisoners were most anxious to learn to write.

In 1841, in his annual report, the chaplain wrote that of all the prisoners committed in the last year, 24 had improved in reading, writing, and the catechism, eight had been taught to read and repeat the catechism, and just four were unwilling to learn anything.

In 1849, the prison authorities advertised for a school master. A Mr Rollins Heron, a 40-year-old Master of a Church of England Elementary School, was employed to teach the prisoners reading, writing, and arithmetic in the newly-built prison. He devoted four hours a day to lessons, and the prisoners made good progress.

But after just three years' service, the school master resigned. The chaplain and the matron took over his duties, and instruction was moved out of the schoolroom and into the cells. This arrangement continued until the closure of the prison in 1878.

This potted history of the school at Lincoln Gaol has been pulled together from a range of official sources. But what's missing are the voices of the prisoners. What was their motivation for learning? Why did some refuse to learn? How did they respond to the religious instruction embedded in lessons? What did the acquisition of literacy, and later, numeracy, mean to them? And crucially, what impact, if any, did prison education have on their future?

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