Penn State vs. The State Penn?

[Valin]

Power Line:

I used to joke that it costs as much to house an inmate in the California state prison system as it would to send the same person to Stanford, but that sending the inmate to Stanford (at least in the humanities) would be bad for the inmate.

 

Turns out this may not be such a joke after all.

 

I missed the story a couple weeks ago about a debate staged between three inmates from the New York state prison system and three students from the Harvard College Debating Union. The inmates won the debate. Here’s the Wall Street Journal report:

 

NAPANOCH, N.Y.—On one side of the stage at a maximum-security prison here sat three men incarcerated for violent crimes.

 

On the other were three undergraduates from Harvard College.

 

After an hour of fast-moving debate on Friday, the judges rendered their verdict.

 

The inmates won.

 

The audience burst into applause. That included about 75 of the prisoners’ fellow students at the Bard Prison Initiative, which offers a rigorous college experience to men at Eastern New York Correctional Facility, in the Catskills.

 

 

I especially like the debate topic and how the winning argument unfolded:

 

(Snip)

 

Why were elite Harvard students “caught off guard”? The simplest explanation is that they suffered the defect of an elite university education, whereas the prison inmates had the challenge of thinking for themselves. Golly—the private sector might do a better job of educating kids? Yes indeed, that is an unheard-of idea at Harvard. I think there’s a broader lesson here about how ideologically monochromatic universities do a great disservice . . . to liberals.

 

(Snip)

 

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Actually reading books and (dare I say it) Thinking for yourself may be a good thing? Who Knew!!!

[Valin]