That list of banned books in Michigan is really interesting. Just from the first few pages -<p>A+ Certification Exam Guide - May facilitate or encourage criminal activity<p>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Threat to the order and security of the institution; role play<p>Against the Wind - Threat to the order/security of institution (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206757.Against_the_Wind" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206757.Against_the_Wind</a>)<p>Art of Seduction (The) - Threat to order/security institution<p>Bookkeeping for Dummies - This book may facilitate crimial activity because the book includes tax forms which may be used to facilitate the filing of false or fraudulent tax documents.
IAMA former teacher at 7370/The Last Mile. AMA<p>Background: I am a cofounder at Hack Reactor, a coding bootcamp in SF. I worked with Beverly and Chris Redlitz to start Code.7370. Hack Reactor dedicated instruction, curriculum, and volunteer management to its foundation by building the curriculum, bundling all required materials (no internet in the classroom), and lecturing through the first class. I personally visited San Quentin a couple of dozen times to plan and teach, as did many coworkers at Hack Reactor. I also managed the volunteer-driven project to build the curriculum, powered by Hack Reactor alums and other volunteers. I worked closely with the students in the program (incredibly smart, dedicated, and community-oriented) and I was given a window into the very inspiring program that TLM envisioned, built, and (over the years since) managed and scaled.
There's one phrase that makes the whole thing very important : "In April, ABC News reported that none of the prisoners who had gone through the program had returned to prison since being released.". It is, imo, the only thing that really matters in the end
I remember I was going to donate some old software text books to a prison volunteer organization. They turned my offer down saying something to the effect that inmate's reading levels would prevent them from comprehending college texts. I remember thinking it would inspire some Malcolm X type person getting all absorbed in reading and expanding the mind. I was pretty shocked at being declined, and made me contemplate being a Pollyanna about this subject.
Some of the ideas referenced in this article seem kind of weird to me, like that coding is “the next big blue collar job.”<p>Is this a profession or a trade?<p>Is “Software Engineering” a euphemism that exaggerates our jobs?<p>Did I waste my time getting a CS degree and spending half my life learning to do this?<p>I’m all in favor of anyone who wants to learn programming having a go at it, but I hope it doesn’t make me an elitist if I wonder whether it’s fair to consider software dev or engineering a trade skill that most anyone should be able to learn in several months without a general STEM education...
Assuming that computer science books are banned because they could be used for getting access to unauthorized systems within the prison, they should also ban books on plumbing because a wrench could be used to hit somebody, or books on math as well because what if a prisoner finds a way to create a quantum tunnel outside of the prison just with some simple equations?<p>I'm consistently surprised by how idiotic our prison system in the US is. It seems to have two mantras: "the more the merrier" and "punish, not correct." I guess that's what happens when you have something as dumbfoundingly stupid as private prisons.
I can't help by wonder if this date is some latent Y2k bug:<p><a href="https://cdn.muckrock.com/news_photos/2017/08/17/hacking.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.muckrock.com/news_photos/2017/08/17/hacking.jpg</a><p><pre><code> "July 2, 1905"</code></pre>
Related: <a href="https://caspiaorg.github.io/website/" rel="nofollow">https://caspiaorg.github.io/website/</a><p>Caspia is an organization dedicated to help prisoners in the state of Washington participate in open source software projects.
Here's the full list of tech/science-related bans I found on the Ohio list:<p>* BEGINNING LINUX PROGRAMMING 4TH EDITION<p>* BLACK + DECKER THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WIRING<p>* LPIC-1: LINUX PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTE CERTIFICATION STUDY GUIDE, THIRD EDITION<p>* MAKE: 35 THE DANGER ISSUE 38 (okay this ban is pretty justified)<p>* OPERATING SYSTEMS DEMYSTIFIED<p>* POPULAR MECHANICS 09/2014<p>* POPULAR SCIENCE 10/2015<p>* PRINTREADING FOR INSTALLING AND TROUBLESHOOTING ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS: SECOND EDITION<p>* WIRED 24.04<p>* WIRED MAGAZINE 08/2015<p>And apparently anything that even mentions Nazis is banned, even if it's just historical content:<p>* INTELLIGENCE REPORT WINTER 2015/ISSUE 159<p>* MAUS: MY FATHER BLEEDS HISTORY<p>* THE GESTAPO: A HISTORY OF HORROR<p>And I wonder what got these magazine issues banned:<p>* THE ATLANTIC 10/2014<p>* TIME 04/18/2016
I volunteered in a NYS prison for a while. They had rooms full of computers which were off-limits to prisoners for unspecified security reasons. Some people were talking about offering a purely paper-based course on programming. At least developing programming skills was not a thought-crime there, though.
I once delivered a public speaking course to a group of prisoners about to go on parole. It was really eye opening to see how low confidence most of them had, and how bad they were at expressing themselves. In my opinion prisons should be made a lot more like college - make it that prisoners are forced to learn skills instead of being forced to do nothing.
All states and the federal government are allowed to enslave prisoners. Is anyone surprised they ban books without reason? As long as the 13th Amendment stays unamended, nothing will ever change in this area. When people are thought of as subhuman slaves, there's no limit to the depravity and horrors that will be justified.
> Computer programming is, according to Wired’s Clive Thompson, “The Big Blue Collar Job.” In countries like Australia and Estonia, coding has become a central part of school curricula. If programming is the wave of the future in employment, prisons in several American states may be cutting incarcerated people off from gaining important skills by preventing them from possessing or receiving books about computer programming.<p>Journalists clearly have a problem with the fact that the asocial nerds and geeks from high school are making much more money than them. That's why we see so many articles referring to us as "coders" (like the people that do medical data entry) instead of "software engineers," and why we see people like Clive Thompson classifying us as blue collar workers--unlike journalists, who presumably are white collar. Considering that to the average reader, rightly or wrongly, one of the central distinctions between blue and white collar workers is intelligence, with blue collar workers stereotyped as being less intelligent, Thompson's classification is a rather obvious slight.