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bermuda--blue143 karma

His answer is "it's cheaper!" without addressing whatsoever why it is cheaper--because there are even more abuses of human rights (and our public prisons do not have a great record on this either), because the corporation values profit over reform, more children are tried as adults and put into general population, more non violent people sentenced to decades and decades, more private prisons rejecting the most violent/difficult prisoners so it looks like they can "control" their population better (when really they just get the chance to pick and choose).

Private prisons (all prisons, actually, but especially private prisons) are fucking evil, and all he is willing to say is that cheaper is always better. The truth: It's very, very hard to close a prison, unless you replace it with another. They are located in largely rural areas and are often the major employeer of an entire communitee. This is why you see a prision in every congressional district in most places, and why the prison population grows rather than shrinks. Gov Johnson is for a reduction in the drug war, at least, but that means nothing if we continue to allow private companies to make deals with the government to house prisoners.

Gov Johnson, please answer this question in full, without ignoring the human rights record of the private prison companies (GEO group and Corrections Corp).

Anybody else concerned with this should look to Rocky Anderson, whose leftist Justice Party is the only really place in politics where this even seems to be on the table right now.

bermuda--blue3 karma

Hey! I'm a soon-to-be-PhD-dropout in English, and I'm planning to get certified to teach HS English. I am especially interested in working in low-income communities. I know this experience will be very different from teaching in the Universities where I have been for the last 4 years. I do have some questions for you, so I hope you are still around!

  1. How much autonomy do you have over which readings/novels/stories/poems you teach? In another question, you mentioned how you include discussions of race in your class. The text you mention is Othello. I'm not opposed to the inclusion of some Shakespeare, but I do worry that especially in a classroom of mostly non-white students and a white teacher that teaching predominantly white authors from the traditional cannon has the potential to reinforce existing power structures and inequalities. Is this something you discuss or something you can work around? For example, is there some guideline that you teach at least one work by Shakespeare in a year, or that you teach Othello specifically, or that you teach a certain number of works from certain time periods/genres/authors? I think Othello is an important text, but it wouldn't be my first choice to start a discussion about race with most non-white students. I'd start with Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Octavia Bulter, Junot Diaz, Tony Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko... How have your discussions of Othello gone?

  2. Have you had luck with your somewhat laid-back teaching methods? Given my experience and my personality, I am apt to treat students like adults. I hate the authoritarian bent of some teachers and administrators who push this kind of teaching.

This was a really great AMA; thanks for taking the time to do it.