Introduction—Radical Reciprocity: Civic Engagement from Inside Out

Abstract

A powerful classroom experience results in a radical and lasting positive change, a metamorphosis. Transformation. Educators seek to define that process, to account for it, and especially to incite it, to open up possibilities for the kind of engaged learning and teaching that will prove transformational. This volume offers an extended reflection on the wider implications of one uniquely powerful pedagogical model. Founded in 1997, the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program weds community-based learning and prison education, bringing college or university students and people in prison together as classmates for a semester of shared experiential learning. Fifteen thousand incarcerated (“inside”) and campus-based (“outside”) students have taken at least one Inside-Out class, and in many areas, inside students are now taking multiple Inside-Out courses for credit in subjects as diverse as sociology, philosophy, performance art, social work, literature, and the law. While these academic classes are the core of our work, they have become an integral part of a larger mosaic of sustained engagement. We will see reflected in this volume the program’s emphasis on alumni activities on both sides of the wall, innovative region-wide collaborations, longstanding Inside-Out think tanks in prisons that engage in public education, trainings, and research projects, and an increasing number of initiatives that take the co-learning pedagogy to sites beyond the prison entirely. This book considers the broader lessons that Inside-Out provides for community-based learning praxis and for postsecondary teaching in general, on campus, in prisons, and in other community settings.