Dr. Brett Pardy is an assistant professor for the School of Culture, Media, and Society at UFV.
As part of an initiative led by Dr. Martha Dow, the director of the Community Health and Social Innovation (CHASI) Hub, Pardy taught MACS 110: Introduction to Communication Studies last fall to Abbotsford’s Pacific Institution inmates. He shared with The Cascade what he learned and why higher education matters in rehabilitation.
What drew you to this initiative?
I’m always interested in how [to] reach education with populations that we [may not] traditionally think of as being university students. I’d never specifically thought about teaching in a prison but [Dr.] Martha [Dow] had this connection and this idea … When the prison started [the] program, I was one of the instructors they asked to do it because they liked my ability to not be too forth-carrying in the classroom … to be conversational and connect what they’re interested in with general ideas of media theory.
How can media and communication studies be valuable to incarcerated students?
One of the big issues in media is that we hear a lot of things, and we have no way to experience them or have the context for them. That is intensified even more when you’re in prison, because you don’t have access to a lot of things going on in the world. So they take in all this information, and then it’s like, ‘well, what do I do with it?’ For example, [I] had a lot of questions about AI, but none of them have seen AI in action. They’ve just seen news stories about AI. So there’s this feeling that a lot is going on in the world, but they don’t have a frame of reference to make sense of it.
Can you describe the structure of the course?
There were a couple less weeks of instruction than there were for a regular class. I tried to approach it [in] the same [way] as [much as] possible, and not [to] think about the situation we’re in too much other than just the obvious adjustment needed — that guys in prison don’t have access to social media, internet, [or] smartphones. So the sort of media they engage with is quite different than students. Which in some ways, was easier for me, because a lot of classic media study stuff is on television viewing … Guys in prison watch a lot of TV. So stuff on TV news bias, they were very excited to discuss. But for the most part, it was the same lecture discussion set up that would be in a typical class.
How did the students respond to being taught?
I think they weren’t sure at the beginning exactly how it would go, but the guys really loved it, and they seemed excited for it. Every week, they came with questions, they had a lot of things going on in the media they wanted to talk about. It’s a bit of a skill to keep it on track enough that it’s still related, but we did a good job of that. I think they were just excited to get out of the normal routine and try something new. It felt like it definitely did spark interest in at least a couple of them, that if the opportunity was available to do more, they would definitely do it.
What was teaching students in prison like for you personally?
It makes me feel that we should do a better job to try and help rehabilitate people back into society because these guys all have skills they can definitely offer, and [I’m] not sure that’s really being taken advantage of … They’re already working very hard to find ways, once they get out, to be good citizens again, and it’s nice to be able to find a way to help do that.
Has the experience taught you anything that you didn’t know before?
I don’t know if it really changed anything, but [it] furthered my belief that it’s important to try and show that education is something you can do [in] any circumstance, [at] any age, and that it’s important to try and reach as many people as you can.
What are your short-term and long-term goals regarding this initiative?
It would be cool if you could actually do a university degree in prison, which you used to be able to do when distance education was mostly paper-based. But now, with distance courses being online and there not being a way for [inmates] to do courses online, that’s not a feasible solution. There are a couple of courses they can take by distance on paper … but it’s not a wide selection … Short-term, I think it’d be great to do another class.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity
