Value-Creating Education at the Crossroads of Education and Incarceration

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 4:20 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum Making and Sensing Beyond Higher Ed Classrooms (Table 23)

Abstract

This study revisits a 2013 call by editors of the socialist, feminist, and anti-racist journal Radical Teacher for a radical pedagogy that emerges out of theory and praxis that can “effectively navigate this institutional crossroads of education and mass incarceration” (Drabinski & Harkins, 2013, p. 5). In this paper I use the Japanese educator and philosopher Makiguchi Tsunesaburo’s (1871-1944) “value-creating education” and abolitionist frameworks to explore how educators can work within the flawed system of higher education within prisons and jails to create value, practice “engaged resistance,” and work toward the larger goals of abolition. Such work can contribute to the research and practice of both higher education within carceral institutions as well as Ikeda/Soka Studies in Education.

Author

• Coray J. Ames Hoffner, DePaul University