I keep a record of interesting statements I’ve heard people make or picked up from a book, movie or the web. This blog title surfaced in a very unusual situation and remains unforgettable even though from nearly forty years ago. It also reminds me that I function best in opposition.
Here’s the context. Shortly after I finished my PhD thesis in the summer of 1984, I got a phone call from my University of Minnesota advisor, Bob Scott. Scott knew that I’d started a business and wondered if I might still have three hours a week to teach a semester course on basic communication at the maximum-security prison in Oak Park Heights.
He’d had difficulty getting any of his recent grads to take on the responsibility. That made sense. The prison was brand new, just three years old, but also housed the most dangerous criminals not only from Minnesota but also from other states as well. It was a level 5 maximum security prison where some high-profile inmates had also been housed. I had no concerns, so I said yes immediately. He gave me the contact at the prison and told me the time to get there to start the classes, indicating that the warden would offer a few rules for my activity and security. The warden was gracious, indicating that there were two tv cameras in the room and that most of the group hoped to eventually get out of prison. And that there need be no concerns about safety since all the group was working on a college degree. They had been told that if they earned a college degree, it would be helpful for the parole board and for a job if they ever got out of prison. The only rules he offered were to never give out my phone number or home address. Anything else I wanted to tell them was strictly up to me.
I’d had a diverse set of experiences before I got there: raised in an upper middle class family and church in post war Detroit area, worked in a Detroit factory for a year, associate minister at a well-educated, upper-middle class church in Pasadena, developed a thriving community of worshippers and a gorgeous architectural building in the university town of Boulder, Colorado, pastored a major church in Flagstaff, Arizona, that included hundreds of students, more than 50 faculty families from NAU as well as a broad section of townspeople, developed a new program of communication and preaching at a Minnesota theological seminary, and then taught a semester of preaching for priests-to-be at St John’s Seminary in Collegeville.
When my advisor called, I was in the process of developing a free-lance business consultancy. But I thought the experience of teaching the incarcerated would provide me with a still more diverse set of human insights. That’s what brought my agreement.
When I walked into the classroom, I saw there were about a dozen students in short rows like a typical small classroom. There was, however, one guy sitting on the right side of the classroom with his back against the wall. I briefly introduced myself, commenting that I’d taught speech on numerous occasions. They could call me Dan. And the best place to begin was to hear from each of them.