Knowledge has long been revered by leaders throughout the ages as the path to freedom. Knowledge is the initiator of mankind’s inevitable enlightenment. But as it had been cultivated, trained, honed and thus educated it had rendered such sophistication as that found in our modern day society.
Since the longstanding practice of fire by light has sustained humankind and literally brought them out of the wilderness, education as a path to freedom stands true – in not only the actual sense, but also the proverbial and non-proverbial.
A miseducation can be rightfully referred to as an education not fixed upon freedom. The cause of a miseducation is predicated on the complete opposite – it is created to ensnare, to hold captive, to limit, and control. Granted the grace of reason, miseducation may falter and give over to greater. But to be ignorant – uneducated – that is the void of all hope and the absolute absence of power. None of us enter this world without paying our debt to ignorance – and since education is in itself a training, no one can hope to be born a master.
I, myself a mere human being on the verge of my 36th year of life am only starting to realize that education, in abundance, is crucial to achieving the most out of the human experience. Almost 20 years from being that stereotypical degenerate high school dropout, I pursued the same education I strived so diligently to avoid. Not only that, its at the sake of my own redemption. Incarcerated, I am able to work on a career in the legal profession. After experiencing the wrath of the American justice system firsthand, I hope to help restore communities by advocating for them in areas of law. The way I face my incarceration today, nearly at the end of a 20-year prison sentence, is with hope and aspiration. This is due to the last few years of me actively pursuing educational goals in a field that interests me.
The system is not oblivious to the value of education in the rehabilitative process. many states and federal correctional facilities offer GED and trade vocation courses, but educational opportunities in a wider field of industries and interests can be more than sustaining – they could be transformative. For too many incarcerated, those types of educational opportunities are almost impossible without help from sources outside of prison (family, loved ones, non-profits, etc.) I even enlisted the help of my now fiance’, where we managed to find an Sallie Mae educational loan with minimum payment of $50 a month. That was completely manageable with my institutional work check.
My rehabilitation reached its highest point once i could see my future through the lens of education and the freedom it had to offer. Higher education opportunities made widely available to the prison population has the potential to create the view of ‘corrections’ as an administration that enhances our communities, not destroy them. To have any hope of freeing the world, we must first focus on un-imprsioning our minds and free ourselves of the preconceived limitations falsely placed on the human spirit and its potential for redemption. If allowed, this prismatic form of thinking will continue to hold us back from the apex of social development and our advancement forward as a more unified force.
Love & Peace,
Q
Brilliance Behind Bars 