Social and Cultural Changes

In this close reading English Language Arts activity set, students examine and discuss the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), a program that offers Bard College degrees in select New York State prisons. Students who are accepted into this degree program follow the same course of study for the same degrees as a Bard student does at Bard College. These activities emphasize one BPI student’s story, from his life prior to prison through his experiences as a student in the BPI program to life after leaving prison. These materials examine the stories through an ELA lens, but the nature of the content and the focus on personal narratives bring to the forefront social, economic, and social justice issues. These activities ask students to expand their understanding of “close reading.” Students will be asked to listen to and observe the language of each clip closely. Students will not be literally reading a text for comprehension, but will instead analyze and derive meaning through careful listening to spoken words and careful observation of individuals’ actions and other visual cues presented in each clip. In doing so, students will be close reading audio-visual media as text for comprehension and deeper understanding.      Opening Statement:       "During my interviews for College Behind Bars, I didn't have a particular thought process or approach to answering the interview questions. My language and insights were the natural outgrowth of the education I received with the Bard College Prison Initiative (BPI). Today, there exists great consensus that mass incarceration is a social problem. In the early 1990s, it was portrayed as the appropriate response to the activities of so-called "superpredators." The label confused me. It conflicted with the person I knew myself to be. Enrolling in BPI gave me the tools that would assist my understanding of the world in which I lived and myself. By the time we began working on the film, I had completed my undergraduate degree and devoted a lot of time to reflecting on why I was in prison. I felt prepared, and empowered, to tell my story." -Jule Hall, BPI Graduate About the author: Heidi Miller, MFA, is an arts educator based in New York, New York.

After hours of intense interrogation, seasoned detectives intimidate the five teenagers into falsely incriminating each other.

Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana discuss the manipulation of their interrogation.

The media response to the Central Park Jogger was swift and prejudiced.

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times talks about the Central Park Five being caught in a proxy war.

The police controlled the story that was given to the news media. Upon closer investigation, the time sequence of the jogger's movements did not add up with the police narrative. The incongruities were set aside, however, since guilt had been established through the confessions.

In the very early morning of Friday, April 20, 1989, a jogger was discovered, badly injured in a ravine the northern area of Central Park. As the morning wore on, dectectives questioned the teenagers they had in custody about the jogger. Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray describe the questioning from dectectives that they received that morning, as the dectives tried to fit the narrative about the jogger ending up in the bottom of the ravine to the teenagers' stories about what had happened in Central Park that night.

Students will examine the personal and broader political circumstances in which country stars Marty Stuart, Emmylou Harris, and Reba McEntire rose to fame during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. At the same time as the United States was coming out of the Vietnam War and later the Cold War, country music and music technology more broadly  were changing. Newer musical influences out of California mixed with traditional southern roots and pushed country music’s boundaries. In this activity, students will encounter the genre's ongoing tension between old and new, and learn from working musicians about the struggle to stay true to one’s roots while simultaneously forging a new path. Some historical overview of this period, included in the support materials, provides additional context about the period to offer perspective about these artists’ circumstances.

Natalie Byfield of the Daily News discusses the horror of the death penalty even being talked about in the context of the Central Park Five case.

The Central Park Five did not take a plea bargain.

Explore the transformative power of education through the eyes of a dozen incarcerated men and women trying to earn college degrees – and a chance at new beginnings – from one of the country’s most rigorous prison education programs. Access College Behind Bars resources here.