Oregon daily emerald., October 23, 1978, Page 7, Image 7

Former professor tutors inmates
By KEN HAS WELL
Of the Emerald
Ruth Jackson, who retired from
the University’s English depart
ment five years ago, still finds time
to teach. For the last nine years,
Jackson has been teaching litera
ture to the inmates of the Oregon
State Penitentiary on a voluntary
basis.
Born in Cotton Valley, La., on
November 16, 1907, Jackson
says she became interested in
teaching at the prison while she
was moonlighting at the Univer
sity. She says she was grading
extension papers and noticed that
almost a fifth of her correspondent
students were prisoners.
“So I got the bright idea that it
would be nice if I went up once a
month and had a little conference
with anyone who was having any
problems,” she says.
She says she first suggested
her idea to the penitentiary offi
cials “just about the time of the
Big Riot,’ of 1968. But, at that
time, “they were not introducing
strange females into the prison,
even an elderly one.”
Jackson, who has a master’s
degree in English from the Uni
versity and who has studied at
Harvard’s sister college, Rad
cliffe, says she received no re
sponse from the prison officials
the first year so she tried again the
following year. After another
year’s wait she was told she could
enter the prison for monthly con
ferences with her correspondent
students.
When she started teaching at
the prison, there was no college
program at all, but soon a full-time
college program called Newgate,
which was federally funded,
began. She was then asked by a
prison official to teach a regular
college-level English class within
the walls of the prison.
She says she started teaching
at OSP in the evenings and after
she retired, she started teaching
three full-time day classes. Jack
son says she spends two full days
a week at the penitentiary with her
students.
When she initially retired from
the University after 17 years she
worked at OSP strictly as a volun
teer. However, Chemekata
Community College has now
taken over the inmate-college
program and Jackson now gets
paid for two of the three classes
she teaches.
“And then I spend an extra
period each day in remedial work
for anyone who wants to come in
and get special help,” she says.
“Because if there is anything
my students in there have in
common (with those on the out
side), it’s that they did not take
advantage of their high school
training; and many of them do
need the extra help,” Jackson
Oregon Daily Emerald
says.
To give her imprisoned stu
dents the best exposure to Eng
lish Literature, she would invite
different guest lecturers from the
University’s English Department.
“And that was very interesting, I
think, for the students, because
when we were on Drayton, Sher
wood could come up and give a
lecture and when we were on
Middle English Ballots, Barre
Toelken could lecture,” Jackson
says.
Jackson says at one time about
one-third of the University’s regu
lar staff in the English Department
had either given one lecture or
done something connected in
some way with the prison.
She says the Educational De
partment of the prison seems to
have more value to the prisoners
than any other section.
‘‘And the atmosphere up in the
Educational Department, I’m
sure, is so different from that of the
rest of the prison,” she says.
“People are treated so courte
ously and it’s just very pleasant up
there," Jackson added.
When asked if she received any
personal reward or satisfaction
from teaching within the walls.
Jackson says she receives a great
deal of satisfaction but “it isn’t that
I think I do a better job than other
people would do,” she says. “I’m
doing something other people
could do but don’t do; I’m doing
something useful. I get a lot of
personal satisfaction,” she says.
“But actually I find it so much
fun that I never think of it as a duty.
It’s a pleasure. And, in general,
students there are very coopera
tive and friendly. They are more
responsive, I think, than Univer
sity students would be.
Of course you could say that I
have a captive audience,” she I
says. 1
‘ And I suppose they have got to |
have this rule, but it seems so
strange to have me be escorted
up the stairs by an officer. I would
feel more frightened to walk
around the University campus
alone at night than I would to walk
into the prison,” Jackson says.
“If anybody tried to hurt me
there, somebody would spring to
my defense, I know,” she adds.
Jackson says that she views the
prisoners in OSP as human be
ings not as the stereotyped televi
sion image. “They are human be
ings and some of them are very
nice human beings. Human be
ings can do very stupid or foolish M
or wrong things, but that does not C
change them from being basically 1
nice,” she says.
, Jackson says that prisoners, ■
like students, need to learn better *
study habits.
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