Plantation, Prison, Pedagogy: An Exploration Into How Male Teachers Organize Their Classrooms to Resist the Correctional Environments in Which They Teach and Their Students Learn

• In Event: Roundtable Session 59
  In Roundtable Session: Applying Organizational Theory to the Education System

Abstract

Much of the literature around resistance within organizations, and schools, focuses on the work of particular actors who desire to bring about change, rather than how those agents influence the behavior of others. While we are aware of who resistors are within organizations, we are less clear how those resistors implement their work. This paper provides insight into how two male teachers, within a correctional facility, encourage their students - most of whom are Black and Latino young men - to grapple with the theoretical underpinnings of the prison industrial complex. As such, these pedagogues design and implement curriculum, in history and culinary arts, which empower their pupils to resist their incarcerated state and to break the cycle of recidivism.

Author

• Travis Bristol, Columbia University