Free and Ignorant, Incarcerated and Educated: One Man's Journey to Expand His Mind While In Prison
by Antonio Settles #323771;DOB 5-13-81
WSPF; PO Box 9900;Boscobel, WI 53805
Education can be a tricky thing. There has to be the right chemistry of desire, conducive environment(s) and opportunity. If not, the likelihood of the proposition of one putting their unwittingly self -sabotaging, crippling ignorance behind them is that much more daunting and it is usually lost to the status quo of oblivion.
When I was on the street, free, and in school, I was a long-time unmotivated C-student. I was always good
at spelling and reading; only fair in math. But looking back on my pre-prison life, I can clearly see that there was an ignorance-induced numbness, a blindspot, in my mind. An open-eyed somnambulance which is similar to the vagueness of having no time- perception as a kid: when growing up, a six month period seemed like a year or a year like 6 months, and the days of the week, as well as the different months of the year, all seemed to blur into one another, creating an indistinct, inaccurate, (distorted) time-line. This vacuum of unawareness comes from, I'm convinced, a perpetually and completely ubiquitous lack of intellectual stimulation that most ghetto denizens' lives are plagued with outside of school (which obviously undermines every school's mission),
Although ignorant during my free existence in society. there was at least one redeeming quality in me: I possessed some measure of curiosity. Growing up an only child, I never became accustomed to any type of social pecking order; as a result, I never accepted the status quo prima facie: I always wanted to know the "why?" of things.
When I arrived at Green Bay Correctional Institution, infamous for being dubbed "The Gladiator School", I had the choice of residing in the riotous South Cell Hall, which housed the youthful, rowdy crowd, but where education services were offered exclusively, or the North Cell Hall, which housed the mature, laidback prisoners. Having heard many disconcerting stories and anecdotes about the South Cell Hall's degenerate ethos and the subversive disregard its pugilistic, loitering cliques have for education, I opted to reside in the much .more tame North Cell Hall. I figured I could take a rain check on the teachers and schoolrooms and avoid the inevitable undesirable situations-and individuals-that would cause me to end up in the hole so early in my prison bid.
Still, I wound up going to segregation and coming to the Super Maximum Correctional Institution (now called Wisconsin secure Program Facility). A veritable blessing in disguise, the isolation imposed by the
Supermax, along with access to extensive library and abundant time to be pensive and introspective, allowed me to become in prison, the person, the man, I could not become on the streets( or any other place teeming with intellect-stunting distractions, whether they be non-conducive goings-on or non-conducive people)) Whereas in GBCI I was afraid of being in an environment un-conducive to my goal of eradicating my ignorance, here, I blocked out everything around me and existed squarely inside of myself to achieve a college of one: we all know that 1 of 1 equals 1 00% and so it was by becoming introverted and becoming my own temple of education that I achieved an environment and an ethos that were one-hundred percent conducive to my goal of educating myself.
Though I come from an environment where there's a lack of abstract thought, where peoples' subject of pondering only springs from daily affairs or things that pass in front of their field of vision: through gumption I was able to bring dimensions to my mind while in prison, that I lacked while free. When the environment that you're unfortunate enough to be cored( embedded) in isn't conducive to your goals and interests, go inside of "X yourself. And nurture the you that you want to become, into existence.
I remember my old math teacher Mr Tyler (of Silver Spring Neighborhood Academy), an extremely tall, light brown-skinned guy, looked me directly in the face and remarked deflatedly "Lights are on but nobody's home." Today he might think it fitting to describe me in less discarding terms. Maybe even to apologize.
Antonio Settles 8 years ago, at time of incarceration
