From the Front Page Sections, translated…
a picture from the website…
Three members from the Severe Criminal Prison “East New York Corrections Facility”, set up a debate team, and, worked hard, honing their debating skills, without the conveniences of the Internet, last month, in a debate competition, they were able to, beat the members of Harvard Debate Team, this showed the effects of the education programs available to the people who are serving time in prison.
The East New York Corrections Facility is the most secure prison system of all. And the facility’s three prisoners who are involved in the BPI managed to win the debates with the students of Harvard.
This program was set up by the Bard Institute of NY, it’d given the inmates who are serving time the opportunity to earn a degree and receive an education at the same time, the goals of this program are to lower the chances of these convicts’ repeating offenses after being freed, and up the chances of their employment after they were freed. The plan had managed to train a lot of amazing debate team members, who had, beaten out students from Vermont University, as well as West Point too.
The topic of debate for this debate meet was “The American Public Schools Should Have the Rights to NOT Allow Children of Immigrants to Attend”. Although the BPI teams were supportive of the side against it on their own, but, they were, assigned to argue for the case, and, Team Harvard were assigned to argue against the case.
But because the prison systems didn’t allow the inmates to log online, so, the debate team can only collect their data using the traditional methods, and still, with them being fully prepared, and their points were valid and all members were articulate in their defending their points, Harvard couldn’t take it. The inmates used “there’s a high dropout rate for children of immigrated parents, and after they’d detached from the school systems, they became, uncontrolled” as the center of their discussion. After an hour long debate, the judge stated, that the team of inmates had won their case, and, the audience started applauding for them like crazy.
The chairperson of the Harvard Debate Team, Butter said, “the BPI came to us, told us they’d wanted to have a debate meet, we’d agreed, hoped to change their lives. The debates had changed our lives as well, and in the competitions, it’d shown, how important getting an education and debating is.” Butter denied that the Harvard team hadn’t put out their best, he’d stated, “We’d never do that, this would not be respectful toward how much work they’d put in, as well as how much talent they have.”
The thirty-one year-old inmate, Polanker was serving time for murder, and was very grateful for how he was able to receive an education while serving his time in prison. He said, “I’m truly blessed, with this kind of opportunity, it’d made us believe in ourselves more.”
The movie, “Good Will Hunting”, although, the M.I.T. janitor, portrayed by Matt Damon had amazing skills in mathematics, but, had gone down the wrong roads, however, with the help of Robin Williams who’d played his mentor and friend, he’d started, working hard toward his own goals in life.
And so, this, would be a GREAT program, because a lot of those inmates are serving time, because they’d lacked the education, because perhaps, they couldn’t get enough money for it, and that’d caused them to commit the crimes, and now, the prison systems are giving them a free chance at bettering their knowledge, and, this program worked, as the article showed.
Life, the Obstacle Course 