[From Mike Acree (980515.1329 PDT)]
Bruce Gregory (980514.1142)--
many people would see RTP
as way to enhance the students' ability to accomplish their goals.
Prisons
are also coercive, but they are not designed to enhance the ability of
inmates to control their perceptions. Calling both prisons and RTP
"coercive" seems to miss something very important.
I don't mean to imply that I'd have to think about it for more than,
say, 15 minutes if I were offered the choice of going back to school or
going to prison for 12 years. (I don't remember the author, but there
was a popular book a few years ago called "The 12-Year Sentence." It
evidently struck a chord with a pretty wide readership.) But it may be
worth remembering that prisons have also been justified, on liberal,
rehabilitationist grounds, as "enhancing the ability of prisoners to
accomplish their goals." That rationale has become pretty much of a
joke by now, and not a very funny one, in relation to prisons.
Constraining people's choices, even just to the extent of confining them
in a prescribed physical space (a desk, a cell) for such prolonged
periods, is an implausible approach to helping them reach their own
goals. I suspect a Test would reveal that it was the goals of the
constrainers, either in schools or prisons, that were more consistently
being implemented. Basically the issue of honesty again. I'm
habitually suspicious when the master presumes to speak for the slave.
Mike