Abstract
Pedagogy can be a humanistic way of engaging social realities in the current era of persistent social marginalization, racial injustice, and political polarization. This article explores one particular community-based pedagogy known as Inside-Out, which brings incarcerated students together with students from a college campus to study together at a local prison or jail. From the student and instructor perspective, the article looks at the ways that Inside-Out catalyzes humanistic thought and action—from within the social-historical context of prisons and universities. It explores how, if processes of racism or criminalization position social groups against each other, a humanistic pedagogy has the potential to meaningfully bring people together across social divides to reckon with dehumanizing social realities. Conclusions are offered on some key elements of an Inside-Out pedagogy that embody a humanistic approach and are relevant to other pedagogical contexts.
Reflexive Statement
The two co-authors for this paper initially met in an Inside-Out course at a correctional institution, which was facilitated by DelSesto. After completing the course in fall semester, Sellers attended the next course in the spring semester, as a teaching assistant and co-facilitator, with three other former students. This smaller group met multiple times a week to study group dynamics and facilitation, social psychology, and the philosophy of Inside-Out. When the spring semester concluded, and other members of the study group were released, Sellers and DelSesto continued exchanging the ideas and writings that would eventually form this paper.
Introduction
“Humanistic sociology is concerned with a critical analysis of the values and institutions of society from the normative position that whatever contributes to the liberation of the human mind and spirit and the enhancement of human potentialities is good”
John F
Glass (1971)
“Inside-Out is a humanitarian manifesto, a breeding ground for hope and action.”
An incarcerated
Inside-
Out
student
As John Glass suggests in the above quote, a humanistic approach to sociology involves exploring ideas and courses of action that might enhance the human condition. In centering its efforts on “whatever contributes to the liberation of the human mind and spirit,” humanistic sociology challenges conventional ways of thinking and acting that contribute to injustice or constrain human possibilities.
In a classroom, humanistic pedagogy is accordingly structured to pose questions about how and why society is structured the ways it is, including how things could be organized differently. If a humanistic approach to sociology is “the study of how to make a better world” (Du Bois and Wright 2002), a classroom oriented around humanistic principles is not only a place for students to learn about the world through books, or to be exposed to the findings of professional sociologists. It must also challenge boundaries that have been created in professional disciplines and everyday life—with critical and future-oriented discussions about social realities.
Overall, a humanistic pedagogy invites us to transgress societal conventions that breed apathy to the way things are, urging us toward action that might make new social worlds (Muller 2012). This means a humanistic approach to teaching in sociology and the social sciences pursues a kind of learning that goes beyond the bounds of traditional classrooms and authoritative, specialized textbooks (Stone 1988). Above all, learning spaces that have a humanistic perspective focus on making room for students to bring their evolving personal experiences into conversation with each other, and with larger social issues, to identify and move beyond the divisions and norms that constrain society in the present (Goodwin 1987).
It is a contention of the two authors that Inside-Out pedagogy can contribute to the theory and practice of this sort of humanistic approach in important ways. At its core, Inside-Out involves bringing together a group of students from a college campus with a group of incarcerated students—to learn, as peers, behind prison walls during the course of an academic semester. Inside-Out is used as a pedagogical model in countries around the world, with thousands of courses sponsored by hundreds of different universities and correctional institutions, but the courses share a common orientation. In general, Inside-Out is an academic course as rigorous as any traditional course on campus, it centers on dialogue and discussion rather than lecture and individual exams, and it involves a project-based component where students explore social problems and solutions. Overall, what emerges from the Inside-Out classroom has much to contribute to teaching in the social sciences and humanities today. As one incarcerated Inside-Out student in our course noted, the classroom becomes a “breeding ground for hope and action.” We think that this sentiment encapsulates the humanistic potential of Inside-Out for our time.
On the following pages, this paper will argue that what is so effective about Inside-Out pedagogy how it can challenge the very origins of dehumanization, which lie in cultural narratives that sustain separation or boundaries between human beings. Mainstream media and culture in the United States tend to encourage a separation between prisons and the rest of society. This may be through either social critiques that turn incarcerated people into only victims of oppression, or, on the other hand, narratives that describe those who are incarcerated as simply dangerous perpetrators. Inside-Out, however, portrays a more nuanced and potentially transformative way of thinking and acting about crime—showing how what perpetuates dehumanization is actually our ways of knowing about prisons, crime, and justice.
Both in the correctional institution and at an elite liberal arts university in the Northeast, we have found that many perceive a pedagogy like Inside-Out to be situated in an oppressor-oppressed dynamic. That is, among students who are interested in the course, and the other people in our lives, it is often assumed that students from the university are a predominantly white “oppressor” class, who will eventually hold leadership positions in society, while incarcerated students are an “oppressed” class of the poor and people of color whose social reality has been constrained by social injustice or forms of social control. 1
Ultimately, based on four semesters of teaching Inside-Out we conclude that the pedagogy offers a potential humanistic approach to begin transcending this oppressor-oppressed dialectic. We draw on our experiences with Inside-Out, from the perspective of instructor, student, and teaching-assistant/co-facilitator. We find that in the Inside-Out classroom, students can explore individual and community potentials. Moments are always arising to challenge conventional boundaries and narratives that make it seem as if people at universities and prisons are entirely different kinds of human beings. Yet at the same time, the course does not simply confront participants with theories, statistics or realities of dehumanization on intellectual level, but it invites all participants to move toward the possibility of transcending the oppressor-oppressed dynamic experientially.
Overall, this paper takes a humanistic lens on our specific Inside-Out course, which focuses on theories of crime, corrections and justice. It explores how Inside-Out can facilitate opportunities to move beyond the walls that separate people in prisons from the rest of society, exploring both the social realities of dehumanization along with the possibilities of acting to intervene in these dynamics. To do this, the paper first introduces the background of Inside-Out pedagogy and what it looks like from within our context of a liberal arts university in the Northeastern United States. Next, it briefly describes the social-historical contexts of the course—including higher education, correctional institutions, criminalization, and racism. It then describes key elements of an Inside-Out pedagogy that embody the humanistic approach, and offers concluding reflections.
Background on Inside-Out Pedagogy and the Authors
Our reflections here are based on four semesters of Inside-Out courses that were taught during two academic years (from fall 2018 to spring 2020) as part of the partnership between a liberal arts university in the Northeastern United States and a nearby correctional institution.
I, Matthew J. DelSesto am a white Italian American man who has had many social advantages, including access to formal education. For the last 10 years, I have worked in a variety of educational programs in prisons and jails in the Northeastern United States. These experiences have motivated me to explore the social-historical context of crime and corrections, and to support learning opportunities in prisons whenever possible. When I began my graduate studies, I was eager to make connections between the university and communities beyond the campus because of the tremendous teachers that I have learned from in community-based settings through prior work. Toward this effort, in 2018, I worked to establish an Inside-Out Program at the university where I was a doctoral student in sociology. My encounter with David Sellers, and other students I have met through this Inside-Out Program, has greatly contributed to my teaching and research, expanding my commitment to engaged scholarship in new ways.
I, David L. Sellers, am an African American man. I was exposed to, and experienced: the American criminal justice system; the emotional, psychological, and the physiological traumas of wrongful conviction with no relief; and the unfortunate reality of incarceration for 17 years. It is during this time that my individual process came to be motivated by, among other things: a commitment to help others; to help myself to know and understand how to effectively operate within criminal justice system by learning about it; and to ultimately get true and equal justice for myself and others. I formed and founded my own institute of self-pedagogy and learning including, among other things, science, law, theology, and communications. My major focus was and continues to be research and study to achieve personal academic excellence, for practical application toward community advancement. I call this “University of Life Studies.” My encounter with Matt DelSesto and my participation in the Inside-Out Program expanded my learning experience, deepened my personal commitment toward civic engagement and social reparations that are long-overdue for oppressed communities, and exposed me to the lead-motif of humanistic sociology.
We got to know each other as part of a course DelSesto facilitated that was inspired by the international Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Inside-Out was developed by Lori Pompa and an incarcerated man, in hopes of facilitating dialogue and exchanging perspectives among incarcerated people and students from a university. Inside-Out courses bring students together from a college campus (“outside students”) with people who are incarcerated (“inside students”) to learn, as peers. While the initial Inside-Out courses focused on topics related to corrections, in the last 25 years, more than 1000 courses have been offered at over 200 prisons and jails around the world on subjects ranging from criminal justice to a range of social science and humanities topics. Through participation in Inside-Out, students ignite their enthusiasm for learning, find their voice, and are challenged to “consider what good citizenship requires.” 2
Although Inside-Out has many affinities with service learning, it is important to distinguish Inside-Out classes from “service learning” or research, which are typically the contexts in which university or education partnerships are found with prisons and jails. Instead of these approaches, Inside-Out strives to incorporate both “community-based learning” and “experiential learning.” Community-based learning provides students with a hands-on learning that will allow them to apply course material to “real-world” settings while also giving students an opportunity for personal growth and introspection (Bucher 2012). The community-based learning in Inside-Out is also meant to be “experiential” in that it engages students with intentional opportunities to reflect on their overall experience in the course—including the intellectual, social, emotional, and ethical-moral dimensions of their experience. In the Inside-Out classroom, students from the campus are not “helping” anyone, nor are they conducting research on people who are incarcerated. Instead, it is a learning opportunity where “everyone is seen as having something vital to offer in the learning process,” and the instructor acts not as a lecturer but as a facilitator of the discussion (Pompa 2013). Students’ thoughts, feelings, and reactions are more than a purely personal experience; they become valuable contributions to interpreting the readings or engaging the course content.
At its core, the specific Inside-Out Program that we are reflecting on here centers around a course titled “Inside-Out: Perspectives on Crime, Corrections, and Justice.” From the campus, the course draws undergraduate students with a wide range of academic and professional interests from law, social work, and education to social policy, law enforcement, and community advocacy. It is cross-listed as an elective for majors in Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Applied Psychology and Human Development. From the correctional institution, students are typically older than the “traditional” college student, and they vary in age, personal background, and academic experience. Inside-Out may be incarcerated students’ first college experience, or they may be nearly completed a college degree.
After a course orientation, Inside-Out activities and discussions at the correctional institution address a different focus each week—causes of crime, the role of prisons and jails in society, myths and realities of prison life, institutional analysis of the criminal justice system, theories of punishment and rehabilitation, victims and victimization, restorative justice, and the relationship between crime and community. Students are assigned readings to complete beforehand, which provide background knowledge on the topics they will explore during class meetings. Once in class, they not only discuss the readings, but also participate in related activities to engage the content on a deeper level. These include community-building exercises, large group brainstorming, guided small group discussion questions, and role-playing exercises. Through these activities, students have the opportunity to personally reflect on their own values and experience related to course topics and collectively analyze illustrative case studies that connect theories to real-world implementation.
Students also complete reflection papers that include observations, analysis/integration with readings, and personal reactions. The observations section encourages students to be present in class, asking for what they noticed about class dynamics during the session. In the reactions section, students describe their evolving emotional reactions to the course. The instructions are to describe their emotional reaction to the class meeting and explore the depth, length, and changes of these reactions. This recognizes the importance of students’ social-emotional experience in shaping course learning, and it gives value to the lived experiences of the students, providing a space to examine feelings they might otherwise ignore. Overall, the papers encourage students to pay attention to the multiple dimensions of their experience, so that they can reflect on its meaning in deeper ways.
As a culmination of the course, students spend the last few course meetings creating a final project in groups, a process which is designed to shift the conversations from analyzing past and present problems to imagining futures and solutions. The students are able to step back and synthesize what they learned into something tangible that could realistically be implemented. The final project is part of a larger celebration of the students’ achievements during the final class. During the Inside-Out Closing Ceremony at the end of the semester, students present their projects to their peers and guests, which have included university faculty and deans, in addition to staff from the correctional facility and community members. Students then have the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Inside-Out in their lives, say parting words to their inside and outside classmates, and later complete a final integrative paper.
Inside-Out in the Context of Higher Education and Corrections
When we are asked about the Inside-Out Program, the initial reactions of faculty, students, or staff from our institutions, or the wider public, often centers on the differences between incarcerated students and students from the college campus. On the one hand, it is well documented that prisons and jails in the United States disproportionately incarcerate those who are poor, black, indigenous, or people of color. On the other hand, the liberal arts university offering our Inside-Out course (like many other private colleges and universities) is a predominantly white institution, where the median income of students’ families is more than three times the national median household income, and many students have little direct experience with prisons.
The students are well aware that their classmates may be coming from vastly different contexts. This is often a discussion topic in the early weeks, and throughout, the course. Yet it the course also attracts a diverse group of students from the correctional institution and the college campus—including students from campus who have incarcerated family or loved ones, and students from the correctional institution with several years of college study. Nevertheless, both inside and outside students wonder how the other group will view them. Will the inside students only see the outside students as wealthy, entitled, naive young people? Will the outside students be able to look past criminal records to see their classmates as human beings?
To some who have not participated in this sort of classroom, Inside-Out may seem like an impossible circumstance. Those who have little experience with prisons or jails sometimes ask if the incarcerated students are prepared for the workload of an advanced undergraduate course. While incarcerated students come to the course with very different educational and personal backgrounds, it is also worth considering that having an advanced graduate degree or a career in higher education may lead those at universities to over-emphasize the importance of formal education, and view degrees as the primary means to develop skills like higher-level reading, writing, and critical-thinking skills. From this perspective, those who are part of university faculty or administration and do not know about the program might think of Inside-Out as potentially less rigorous than a typical college course. In practice, however, we have found that this could not be further from the truth of the student experiences in an Inside-Out classroom. Students almost always see Inside-Out as more intellectually, socially, and personally challenging than typical college courses.
At the same time, the social context of racial injustice and economic inequality seems to lead others to view Inside-Out, on an abstract level, as potentially using incarcerated students to advance the needs of privileged students from the campus. This view is also not entirely true to the experience of students in the course. In part, this may be because the presence of students from the campus also advances the interests and needs of incarcerated students, which involve, for instance, learning more about college life, having contact with the outside world, and earning college credit. Inside and outside students are also extensively prepared in advance of the course (through an application, interview, and orientation process) with consistent opportunities to discuss the structure and process of the course throughout (as separate groups of inside or outside students, and together as a combined group). In our context, we have also found it to be important that all students have the opportunity to receive the same credit for their coursework.
Overall, we see Inside-Out as an intervention in both academic and correctional contexts that can be experienced as dehumanizing. On the one hand, academia is in danger of reducing knowledge to abstract collection and analysis of data that is locked away behind the paywalls of academic journals and only accessible to specialists. Students may even come to view their degree as purely a credential that is a hurdle in the way of their social life and professional advancement. On the other hand, correctional systems turn people into numbers and objects who are then (either implicitly or explicitly) considered inferior or broken, in need of “correcting.” In either context, students at an elite university, or those who are incarcerated at a correctional facility may find themselves simply “going through the motions,” and therefore not investing their full time and effort in themselves or their communities.
The pedagogy of Inside-Out is therefore ultimately a humanistic contribution to the long-standing struggle against dehumanization (i.e., Freire 1970)—precisely because it brings together groups, from a university campus and correctional institution, that would not normally engage in structured dialogue with each other. It is neither an educational experiment, nor is it necessarily a radical idea. It is an encounter between people that invites confrontation with the social and historical conditions that lead to oppression, and ultimately challenges participants to continue studying and transforming their social reality. In order to better understand some of the key qualities of Inside-Out, it is worth first exploring the larger historical context within which it takes place today.
The Myth of Separation: From William Lynch to Humanistic Possibilities
One of the significant social divides of today is around forms of marginalization related to racialization and criminalization. In the wider public, “mass incarceration” is increasingly seen as one way in which the social boundaries of race are recreated because of the significant disparities in criminalization and incarceration based on racial categories (Alexander 2011). Humanistic sociologists have also long recognized that race is both socially constructed and has very real, dehumanizing impacts (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020). That is to say that racism is not only a social problem, but it is also a symptom of a way of knowing, which is based on turning some people into objects to be categorized, analyzed, and exploited. 3 Inside-Out, viewed from the perspective of humanistic pedagogy, does not necessarily address the problems of racism or criminalization directly. It does, however, challenge the underlying logic of dehumanization which is at the core of any idea that separates people into definitive binary categories such as white/non-white or criminal/law-abiding.
The archetype of this myth of separation and logic of dehumanization can be seen in the iconic William Lynch speech. 4 The story goes that William Lynch was a European and a King James Bible carrying Christian. He was a plantation owner in the West Indies. He came to Jamestown Virginia in 1712. A document found in the basement of an old courthouse, titled “Slave Making Kit” describes, in a speech, why Lynch came, and what he came to do. On the bank of the James River, he began to explain that he brought with him a supposedly scientific method of “slave making” which he had employed on his plantation in the West Indies. His method for slave making consisted of performing a series of mass demonstrated inhumane acts of torture, sometimes ending in death. This was done to break black people out of their connection to community and worldview of interdependence. Acts of terror were performed on black men and women while masses of others, including children, watched in utter fear. This produced a traumatizing state of frozen psychological fear, which was continuously maintained by, among other things, rape, severe beatings, and hangings (later called “Lynching”).
Yet the impacts of such trauma were not only evident in the oppression of black people. They also manifested in an inherited, subliminal social psychology of privilege and white supremacy. After attempting to break black people psychologically, William Lynch gave instructions on how to create self-hatred, distrust of alike (other slaves) and trust of unlike (the white master), through envy, jealousy, and strife. He assured those slave masters who had called upon his services that if they followed his instructions, the system would become psychologically ingrained. Thus, he imagined, the system would self-perpetuate for hundreds, and maybe thousands, of years.
This story has connection to social realities of American colonization. For instance, Howard Zinn (1980) explains how in the 1700s, there were fears of a unified uprising among indentured Irish servants and the black slaves who were discontented with their social status. Later, in the wake of the American Revolution, marginalization across lines of race and class had become naturalized in the broader culture. When Alexis de Tocqueville, a French Christian, visited the United States for his 1835 book (Democracy in America), he came to study how his European contemporaries in the United States, or as he puts it, “enlightenment man par-excellence,” were thriving and living among the Native Americans Native and the Black slaves. He observed how social control of these two groups had come to be, in his view, a necessary part of Western culture and life (e.g., de Tocqueville 2000: 303–305).
This racialization, of course, has a long history that was promoted by religious authorities, including the infamous declaration of Pope Nicholas V in his 1452 papal bull, “Dum Diversas” [The Doctrine of Discovery]. On the eve of European colonization of the planet, this document proclaimed that European Christians had, “full and free permission to invade, search out, capture and subjugate unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be ... And to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.” Conquest and enslavement of natives—in what is today considered Africa, Asia, or the Americas—along with permanent racial caste could therefore be justified according to this religious and moral teaching. These ideas reverberated throughout many philosophical and theological teachings in so-called Western Civilization, and they accordingly influenced the ways that Europeans came to imagine themselves and those they were colonizing.
What is perhaps most significant of this myth of separation is its enduring and concrete social psychological impacts on people across hundreds of years. By the end of the 20th century, scholars were beginning to explore the present-day influence of this institutionalized and cultural white supremacy through several lenses, including Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (DeGruy 2005). The signs and symptoms of this inherited trauma manifests socially and psychologically. Descendants of slaves or those with experiences of oppression based on anti-Black racism, inherit schemas and scripts that manifest in the lives and pursuits of Black people today (Akbar 1996). At the same time, the descendants of the slave master, alongside those who consider themselves white, inherit a paranoia, which is founded in a “fear of genetic annihilation” by black people. Their interiorization of this fear is the root of white supremacy, which manifested in racial animus, class inequality, and injustice. In sum, whether acknowledged or not, whether we as society like it or not, we unconsciously and/or consciously maintain the attitudes and beliefs of white supremacy that are deeply rooted in United States history (e.g., Welsing 2004; Butler 1993).
Scholars have long observed how this myth of separation—the flawed notion that people are fundamentally separate based on racial categories—has also extended to how society defines what counts as a crime. In the process of criminalizing groups of people based on social class or race, there is ultimately a boundary drawn between prisons and the rest of society. 5 Criminalization therefore overlaps with the history of racialization, reinforcing the notion that people who are incarcerated are a different class of human being. This does not mean that people are convicted of crimes just because of their race, but that the processes of racialization and criminalization have a shared logic of dehumanization, which effects everyone involved.
On the one hand, today those whose social groups have historically been classified as racially inferior or as criminal, including those who are currently incarcerated, may experience a sense of doubt in their abilities and fear for their lives. At the same time, others who have been part of dominant or privileged groups may experience an unspoken sense of superiority, with a self-worth that depends on being one of the “good” and righteous people who must either attempt to control or try to “help” the racialized and criminalized others (for instance, through volunteering or charity directed at those who are said to be unable to help themselves). Even research, pedagogy, or media that aims to disrupt racialization and criminalization can reproduce boundaries between prisons and the rest of society, which turn prisons or people who experience incarceration into objects of intellectual curiosity, categorization, and analysis. This is precisely where the contribution of a humanistic pedagogy can be most important. Rather than solidifying the boundaries between prisons and the rest of society, a humanistic pedagogy aims toward the development of critical consciousness about social realities through dialogue (i.e., Muller 2012).
Paolo Freire offers a particularly powerful way of understanding the potential for a humanistic approach to pedagogy that is relevant to disrupting the enduring myth of separation, which continues to perpetuate socially made race and class inequalities today. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (1970) argues that throughout history the social organization of society presents a prevailing social order, which excludes some to establish its own boundaries. All human beings are therefore born into the world in some relationship in this struggle, with varying levels of oppression and privilege. Yet human beings also have the capacity to transcend this struggle “against” each other, in the creation of a new humanity, as they begin to make conditions for new social realities. It is especially with dialogue-centered pedagogy that this sort of capacity to transcend existing social realities can be nourished. Importantly, oppressions may never finally or fully transcended, as new power imbalances emerge in the very process of questioning existing realities. Responding to oppression, toward the realization of human and community potential, is therefore about developing a sensibility that will enable all involved to engage with an iterative process of imagination, dialogue, and action. Some grounding sensibilities and approaches to humanistic pedagogy, based on our experience with Inside-Out, are described below.
Humanistic Qualities of Inside-Out Pedagogy
Of central concern for humanistic pedagogy is what Paolo Freire referred to as the problem and possibility of humanization. For Freire, identifying the problem as one of humanization brings the historical and present reality of dehumanization to light. People have been excluded, by design, along lines of race, class, nationality, gender, language, sexuality or other factors. Dehumanization is therefore a reality because of social policies and systems—that disadvantage some groups over others—and it is also an underlying culture that permeates our individual and collective lives. If some groups are not able to secure basic human rights or needs, this impacts everyone.
Rather than becoming alienated or passively accepting this condition, a humanistic pedagogy nourishes what Patricia Hill Collins (1986) refers to as “perspectivity”—enabling all to see themselves as connected to each other, despite, or even because of, their differences. It invites people beyond dualistic thinking of the oppressor versus the oppressed, in a culture that seems locked in perpetual struggle, and into the possibility for making more just, peaceful, and humane societies in solidarity.
Considering that the Inside-Out model we use has existed since 1997, there has been a great deal of writing and research about Inside-Out pedagogy. This ranges from empirical research (e.g., Allred 2009; Martinovic, Liddell and Muldoon 2018), to critical reflections on program evaluations or pedagogical experiences (e.g., Conti and Frantz 2017; Pompa 2004), and connections to other models of research and pedagogy (e.g., Kubiak and Milanovic 2017; Payne and Bryant 2018). Our own reflections here center on the relevance of Inside-Out to humanistic pedagogy. We believe that this focus can help to both further elaborate central elements of Inside-Out pedagogy and also describe how Inside-Out advances long-standing humanistic perspectives. In this spirit, we offer four elements of Inside-Out that reflect a humanistic approach: social imagination, dialogue, circles, and action.
These four humanistic qualities of Inside-Out pedagogy emerge from insights related to our experiences and a recent program evaluation that included four semesters of our particular Inside-Out Program (DelSesto, Chaparro and Pyo 2020). The program evaluation was completed (before this paper began) to better understand the needs for future programming and communicate the impacts of Inside-Out to our university and correctional supporters. 6 In our analysis that follows, student impressions from this already existing evaluation are expanded and contextualized with scholarship related to the humanistic tradition. We deliberately do not always say whether or not the student being quoted was incarcerated or not because we see similar humanistic sensibilities and capacities being developed among all involved. Although these elements of a humanistic approach come from our experience in Inside-Out pedagogy, we see them as relevant to many kinds of teaching and scholarship.
Social imagination
Key for a humanistic perspective is to invite people into a view of a interdependence between the self and the wider socio-cultural/historical context. This means, as Mills (1959) suggested, that pedagogy ought to allow students to connect their own “personal troubles” to wider “public issues,” so that students can begin to clarify the social realities in which they live (Goodwin 1987). The social imagination involves seeing “the social” relationships which are not immediately physically present to the senses. That is, it is a mode of thought that connects individual context to larger social forces and webs of relationships that have made, and are making society.
As Mills (1959) explains, the social imagination is a “quality of mind” that creatively crosses scales and disciplines, beyond studies within the discipline of sociology. 7 This quality of mind, “is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to the comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry” (Mills 1959:7). In this sense, the social imagination also awakens students to what Castoriadis (1987) refers to as the “imaginary institution of society”—or the ways that society is ultimately an undetermined creative process. The social realities that people experience today are a product of a particular way of imagining the world, and therefore, a new imagination can create the conditions for entirely different social realities to emerge.
A pedagogy that nourishes the social imagination, therefore, recognizes the potential of human language and thought to clarify and transform the social realities that we have inherited. It helps students reconsider that which has come to seem “normal.” As one Inside-Out student explained: “what I’ve learned through the readings is that once you’ve been arrested and go through the court process, you start to adapt to something that is not normal. You lose a sense of hope and being in prison is normalized.” Whether we experience privileges or oppressions, the given social order can appear as if it is natural. Humanistic pedagogy, in this context, draws all participants into a new imagination of how we might participate in the remaking of society.
This is to say that at the core of a humanist approach is a social imagination that catalyzes new consciousness about designed social exclusion and oppression, which continues to create human suffering today. Pedagogically, this means opening and framing a learning space with a deep engagement in social-historical reality. In the infamous William Lynch speech described earlier, Lynch acknowledges, in 1712, on the bank of the James River what is increasingly known today about how social context influences human growth and development. Lynch concludes that by depriving Black people of connection to social-historical context, they can be turned into docile individuals. In this, he recognized that if slaves were to come into contact with an understanding of the social-historical context of their enslavement, they might be transformed—as they locate their lives as part of a larger unfolding narrative, in which they potentially have agency. Something similar could be said about those who are incarcerated, in that the system encourages a docility that humanistic pedagogies and possibilities can challenge.
This insight is critically important for pedagogy today, from the perspective that humans require some kind of symbolic, narrative, or existential grounding. However monotonous (or exhilarating) daily life is, people live out some sort of often-implicit narrative that explains their life, who they are, and where they are going. Therefore, allowing students to engage deeply with social-historical contexts can spark an “extended process of unlearning,” that involves, “a radical questioning of previously assumed privileges, intellectual assumptions, moral judgments, and emotional comfort zones” (Pfohl 2004:114). One student of Inside-Out affirms the power of such a social imagination, claiming that the course, “helped me to build my skills to critically challenge and attempt to understand the history and functions of different systems in society… to question these things, rather than blindly accept how they are.”
Students also noted that the voices of their peers in the classroom were expanded by an approach to crime and justice that describes historical foundations of the system, and also presents contrasting points of view. In terms of the historical foundations of incarceration, Mauer’s (2006) work provides, among other things, a historical base that sets the stage of the social-historical context. For example, he opens his book “looking back on two centuries of the prison in America,” to see, “how little the institutional model has changed since the nineteenth century,” in contrast with, “how other institutions and professions have evolved over the past two hundred years” (Mauer 2006:5). An example of presenting different perspectives on the same topic comes from Forman (2012) and Alexander (2011), who provide a social-historical context that is complex and engaging, with accumulated research and studies from numerous sources. In particular, Forman demonstrates how to critique another’s perspective honestly and for the sake of advancing collective and humanistic understanding. For instance, he is willing to explore both the strengths and weaknesses of the “New Jim Crow” analogy described in Alexander’s writings. For each session in the Inside-Out course, students read from those with different takes on the topic of the week, including writings ranging from incarcerated authors to social researchers and law enforcement.
Here, a social imagination involves making connections between individual biographies that students might bring to a course and the larger historical forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, society. In this sense, Inside-Out does not portray knowledge as definitive social facts, but allows students to participate in exchanging ideas and learning new perspectives. As one student put it, “The class proved that by combining the ideas of a diverse group of people,” from the class members and readings, “meaningful change can occur within society and within the minds of the people involved.” It is in this sense that Inside-Out invites all students to new accountability for their own participation in systems that make society, even if they are not personally responsible for creating current institutions. Of course, there is no guarantee that students will deeply engage the readings for any course. It also seems to be the case that social imagination is something that cannot be forced, but it must be experienced. The experience may come when students begin to explore their impressions to course topics in and through conversations with others.
Dialogue
Inside-Out, as humanistic pedagogy, also utilizes a classroom dynamic focused on dialogic exchange that has the potential to neutralize divisions that are based on race, class, ethnicity, and fear. Lori Pompa, a founder of Inside-Out Center at Temple University explains the power of dialogue in Inside-Out this way: At the beginning of any college course everyone involved, whether consciously or not, carries assumptions about those with whom they will be sharing the semester. These judgements can be based on many factors: age, skin color, accent, dress, where one sits, how one acts—whatever is picked up through sensory cues. In the Inside-Out class, where two seemingly disparate groups come together in one space, the usual assumptions also include expectations about intelligence, dangerousness, and trustworthiness. It takes only a short time for this assumption to be dispelled, resulting in one group, whose common elements emerge more prominently than their differences (Pompa 2013:18).
This process, of moving from isolated and fearful individuals toward a collective identity is essential for humanistic pedagogy. Ray Muller explains that a key emphasis of a humanistic approach is “helping students become mindful of the affective dispositions necessary for sustained civic engagement.” (Muller 2012:55). Muller continues, quoting Anne Colby and her colleagues: “If today’s college graduates are to be a positive force in this world, they need not only to possess knowledge and intellectual capacities, but also to see themselves as members of a community, as individuals with responsibility to contribute to their community” (qtd. in Muller 2012:56). Students of Inside-Out do report that they experience themselves to be acquiring a new sensibility in this way, for instance, when one student explains how the dialogue-centered focus of the course “taught me a lot about how to approach conflict, how to look at things holistically, and how to be more understanding.” Such a disposition is not formed through reading about community-based conflict resolution or responses to harm, but by actually practicing it each week through difficult but honest conversations.
What is perhaps most essential about the kind of dialogue that can happen in an Inside-Out course is that social theory or knowledge is not imposed from the outside for students to memorize and repeat in essays or exam. Instead, the course involves the creation of a teaching-learning community where all are seen as accountable for doing the work to listen empathetically, reflect personally, and thoughtfully contribute. The professor shifts from a traditional teaching role toward a facilitation role, embracing the humanistic potential of seeing students as, “partners in creating a more just and equitable society” (Dolgon, Harvey and Pennell 2015:132). This sensibility is represented in what one student summed up a central takeaway from Inside-Out to be: “A different understanding of people and the value of contact, communication, and conversation in working toward common goals and the greater good.”
Inside-Out dialogues are not entirely open-ended, but they are structured through community-building activities, open-ended group brainstorming, a combination of guided small and large group discussions, and project-based activities where students explore the applications of what they are learning. Through such an approach, students come to view their own personal experience as central to the learning environment, and begin to more honestly interrogate their life context, which enables a sense of solidarity with classmates who are doing the same (Maclaren 2015). This shared purpose generates a learning momentum of its own that spirals within the classroom and beyond into the lives and communities of all who participate.
Circles
One Inside-Out student described the Inside-Out learning experience as “a renewed sense of community in education, where being inside didn’t prevent you from thinking outside the intellectual box.” This, in part, comes from how Inside-Out pedagogy is centered, to the greatest extent possible, on sitting in circles. This practice, as described by long-time scholar of civic engagement, Peter Block, is “the geometric symbol for community and therefore for arranging the room” (Block 2005:26). Similarly, Pompa describes the significance of a circle in Inside-Out Pedagogy this way, “In that circle, everyone is equal—with an equal voice and an equal stake in the learning process. Everyone does the same reading, writing, and grappling with complex issue together, in a shared learning process” (Pompa 2013:16).
The circle is inclusive and also sets the foundation for the kind of learning community and dialogue that will develop. One student explained the overall experience of the Inside-Out this way: “Even though we live on opposite sides of prison walls and we have not experienced what others have, it does not mean that we cannot relate to each other. There has been laughter and joy in our time in class. I don’t think it’s because our conversations have necessarily become more light-hearted, but I think it’s because there’s a sense of community that has been built.” Many students say that they experience the course similarly, as a community of learning and teaching, where learning is not only a chore, but it is a joyful struggle and meaningful activity.
In this sense, maintaining a circular seating arrangement in the classroom may also be part of a humanistic pedagogy that facilitates opportunities for all to have the “actual experience of being critically aware, socially creative and cooperatively related” (Rader 2003:221). This is to say that in humanistic pedagogies, like for Inside-Out, the process through which teaching occurs is as important as the content. In the case of our Inside-Out course that focuses on crime, corrections, and justice, the circle has even larger significance.
What is especially symbolic about the circle in the Inside-Out classroom is that both classroom pedagogy and conventional justice processes typically use a linear model for producing and transmitting knowledge. For example, one Inside-Out student explains how the “knowledge that we are all connected and not separate from one another” was directly related to the possibility of systemic change or the, “hope of restorative justice and the need to alter the punishment perspective.” In other words, the circle reflects both the dialogic pedagogy, where all are considered equals in the process, but it also prefigures or models a way of relating to other people. This connects to restorative processes where the circle is both a practice or way of proceeding and also a symbol for community (Pranis, Stuart and Wedge 2003).
In learning contexts, Freire (1970) describes the conventional banking concept of education, where the teacher deposits knowledge in the students as if their minds were empty containers or blank slates. This approach is a clearly linear or even one-way relationship to knowledge, where rows of desks in a classroom with the teacher behind a podium at the front of the class communicates a hierarchical conception of knowledge. Similarly, conventional courts and justice systems in the United States operate on a “vertical” system that embraces power hierarchy where the judge sits symbolically “above” the other participants, and ultimately one party (the defendants or prosecution) “wins” the case. In stark contrast to this, Indigenous and restorative justice processes often use a horizontal or circle conception of justice where no person is above the other: “In a circle, there is no right or left, nor is there a beginning or an end; every point (or person) on the line of a circle looks to the same center as the focus. The circle is the symbol of Navajo justice because it is perfect, unbroken, and a simile of unity and oneness. It conveys the image of people gathering together for discussion” (Yazzie 1994:180).
Action
Humanistic approaches to education emphasize action. Calls for evermore research that are common to research on social problems epitomize the tendency toward passive observation in social sciences (DelSesto 2022). Conversely, humanist teachers and scholars emphasize a social science that is not taught or practiced from a value-neutral stance, but rather one that illuminates courses of action. As Du Bois and Wright (2002) explain, “Humanistic sociology must be an exploration of effective social arrangements, institutions, and social forms that improve the conditions of living… We begin with analyzing human needs and then develop a society that meets them” (p. 5). This echoes Mills’ humanist view, which argues for an approach to sociology that is oriented toward “raising demands” for alternative policies, and “setting forth such alternatives,” in and with new publics (Mills 1959:183). For Mills, a humanistic approach is a future-oriented way of seeing the world, or a form of social thought oriented toward, what Mills calls, the “possible futures of human affairs.” The goal of such reflection is to “find points of effective intervention, in order to know what can and must be structurally changed,” and “discern the alternatives within which human reason and human freedom can now make history” (Mills 1959:176).
One student summarized Inside-Out as a learning experience that “armed me with the information I need to propose and act out my ideas of solutions.” This is due, in part, to the intentional structure where, as a culmination of the Inside-Out course, students spend the last few meetings creating a final project in groups, a process which is designed to shift the conversations from analytical to action-oriented. The class is then able to step back and combine what they learned into something tangible that could realistically be implemented. Students first narrow down the overall topic of their project, and decide on the general problem they want to address. They then break off into small working groups to develop sections of the project. The scope of the project is less important than the process of developing an action-oriented way of thinking, which conceives the relationships, interventions, or strategies that might initiate change. As they are developing their ideas in small groups, students report their ideas back to the larger group for discussion of each section and how they might fit together. Finally, they prepare a final report. During a Closing Ceremony at the end of the semester, students present their project to guests.
One particularly strong example of desire and commitment to action that can take root through Inside-Out comes from the spring 2020 semester, which was interrupted by the coronavirus just before the final project was about to begin. The correctional institution temporarily suspended all programs for several weeks as society dealt with the early stages of the pandemic. The class project centered on reentry housing, but contrary to the typical Inside-Out semester, students from campus were unable work together with incarcerated students until after the semester was over. Despite the unique circumstances, several students from campus, including some who had already graduated, decided to continue meeting after their semester was over. At the same time, some incarcerated students from the course stayed in correspondence about the project, offering their feedback and contributions as the project evolved. This ultimately led to students organizing an online forum on reentry with leaders from local non-profits, nearly one year after the actual end of the course.
Although, in general, the Inside-Out final project is focused on developing some sort of action based on the course topics, it is also meant to orient students toward how they might act from within their lives, in large or small ways. During the group project students will often comment that while group work in other academic contexts seems to encourage individual ownership of ideas where everyone takes a piece of the project to do on their own, the Inside-Out classroom fosters a more collaborative process. For instance, one student notes the particular approach to action that Inside-Out inspired, which involved, “the importance of sitting down with the same goal and having different perspectives on it.” This taught the student that “Learning from others is the best way to change.” We believe it is helpful that students are not graded individually on some polished project, but instead they are graded on their overall level of participation throughout the process. That is, the final project in Inside-Out is meant emphasize a process of genuinely developing ideas together, rather than individual ownership of ideas.
Overall, with the temptation for cynicism in an era where endless streams of information and analysis are available in an instant in 24-hour news cycles or over the internet, the prospects for genuine action, that might adequately face the challenges of today, sometimes seem bleak. Despite a globalizing society with technologies that have the power to bring us closer together, it often seems we have become more politically polarized, socially divided, and unable to act.
Inside-Out rejects singular narratives about crime, justice, or society more broadly and instead creates and advocates for many possible futures, at both an individual and societal level. One student, for instance, explained that “Inside-Out allowed me to see possibilities that have changed my sense of direction,” and this was directly related to “the potential of a new revolution in the general social conscience.” It is in this sense that Inside-Out both encourages participants to act, but it is also a form of social action in and of itself. When conceived and practiced this way—as a form of action that is rooted in the power of circles, dialogue, and social imagination—pedagogy can aspire toward its humanistic potentials.
Concluding Reflections on Humanistic Pedagogy and Inside-Out
In the quote that opens this paper, John Glass argues for a sociological practice and pedagogy that “contributes to the liberation of the human mind and spirit.” It is, however, worth remembering why the human mind and spirit are in need of liberation. Or put differently, we need to ask: liberation from and for what? In this paper, we have suggested that what is required today is a liberation from the myth of separation—in organizational decision-making, higher education pedagogies, the design of social systems, and in our everyday lives.
In some ways, this myth of separation is epitomized in the idea of race, which holds there are different kinds of human beings who can be categorized based on their skin tones or physical features. The notion of race allowed those who initiated race-based classifications, and called themselves white, to justify violence and oppression toward others who they determined to be different. This myth of separation persists today, in similar and different ways. It has also been extended to issues of crime and justice, where certain groups are criminalized and (implicitly or explicitly) considered to be a distinct, or even inferior, class of human being. As we have argued in this paper, the myth of separation might involve demonizing incarcerated people as violent perpetrators, but it is also present in narratives that portray people in prisons as primarily downtrodden victims of a system or circumstance, who are in need of charity through research, education, or other interventions.
It is in this context that a main aspiration of Inside-Out pedagogy, described by the Inside-Out Center as “moving beyond the walls that separate us,” takes on particular significance. Moving beyond the walls does not only refer to the physical barriers between prisons and the rest of society, but also the social ones, which construct distinctions between who university students or incarcerated people are as human beings. Participants in our Inside-Out courses indicate that they experience this separation in their thoughts, emotions and imagination regarding who their classmates are or what course topics mean to them.
As we have described, there is also evidence to suggest that Inside-Out is a humanistic pedagogy, in the sense that it offers a number of opportunities to challenge this myth of separation or move beyond the walls that separate us. Inside-Out does this primarily through the structure and process of the course, which center on imagination, dialogue, circles, and action. What is significant about these four distinct, but overlapping, emphases of the course is how they do not simply try to change what people think about through new information, but rather they invite all participants into new ways of thinking, knowing and acting.
For instance, the emphasis on dialogue and circles offers a way of thinking that is more collective and does not rely on a single textbook or the enlightened thoughts of a few individuals (in the readings or in the class dynamics). As was noted, these qualities of the course allow all involved to see knowledge about society as an amalgamation of different perspectives instead of a series of social facts. Knowing in Inside-Out pedagogy, therefore, is a process in which all participants enter into conversation with each other thoughtfully and with a sense of humility. The circle also models a way of thinking collectively as a group, which can be challenging because, in a circle, it is more difficult to retreat into the comfort of our own individual thoughts and habitual responses.
At the same time, the emphasis on social imagination and action in Inside-Out is also humanistic to the extent that it enables students to see themselves as part of a larger system that is not completely determined. This is about questioning what we have come to take for granted as normal. It also involves learning to see how we are both shaped by and potential shapers of society. Students often say that despite the enormity of the suffering, challenges, and inequities discussed in the course, they often leave with a renewed dedication to take action—in their personal and professional lives.
Overall, we are not suggesting that Inside-Out offers a way of fixing social problems, or harmoniously paving over differences. And although we write of circles and dialogue, we do not to see these as always “easy” or “nice” processes. That is, “transcending” divisions, or “moving beyond” walls is not about arriving a single narrative of crime, corrections, and justice. Rather it means, on the one hand, unearthing the many contrasting perspectives in ways that encourage everyone to grapple with how and why they have come to think in the ways that they do. On the other hand, transcending also means using the class meetings to model different ways of thinking and acting together that students might try out for themselves outside of the classroom.
In an age of persistent social marginalization and dehumanization, along with growing political polarization that is often also characterized by a mix of information-overload, burnout, apathy, and despair, Inside-Out offers moments of inspiration and some possible ways forward. More than a course, Inside-Out is a way of knowing and making meaning collectively. Its importance is not only in the literal knowledge gained about social realities but also the expansion of capacities to understand and act in new ways. Such a pedagogy is especially relevant for those seeking to engage with social sciences from a humanistic perspective, to understand and transform forms of social injustice today.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
