Johnny E. Mahaffey
February 21, 2016

MORE OF THE SAME; YET NOT THE SAME

First off, another rally for inmates at the South Carolina State house is set to take place on March 16, 2016 from 2 PM to 6 PM.
See: heartsforinmates.org

The prison has recently lost a massive amount of staff; the principal at the school in which I work has now left as well. This leaves us no one! We have no teachers, no secretary, no principal! We're suppose to have a principal, a secretary, a math teacher/Work Key teacher and an English teacher; but, alas, there are none. The school is shut down. This is upsetting because five guys are in the middle of taking their GED tests.... The last half of the tests for them (the English and Math portions), that was suppose to be given in about two weeks, simply won't be now.
There's no one here to administer the tests for them.
And it's not the warden(s) fault. It's the politics of the system. Priority is put on the chapel, and the spreading of dogma. Education takes a backseat in the scheme of it all--the Education Department gets the least amount of support of all the departments. Even right now, as I type this: about 100 prisoners are filing out of the chapel after a big dinner. Half these guys are habitual sinners that go pray for a free meal (that seems to be the driving force--food used to hook in the starving). It's sad.
I wish more went into education.
I wish the guys could have a school that's open at least half as many days as the chapel gets to be. I wish the school could get just 10 percent of the financial aid/donations the chapel gets: we could have books, paper, pencils, and maybe a nice big copier like the chapel has, or the new computers they have, the printers.
You want to teach them to pray, fine. But how about letting them learn some basic grammar skills, and some math! Maybe give a career skill to keep them from coming back to prison?