Education Changes Lives.
This is true not only for people on the outside, but for prisoners as well—especially for prisoners. We come from circumstances where education was either not an option; for most of us, surviving our immediate environment was the only thing we worried about. The greatest irony is that this lack of education is what led us to thinking we had no options.
Prison is one of the most hopeless places; for those of us who face lengthy sentences, even more so. We all made mistakes that led us to where we are. But now that we are here, what comes next? Certainly, there is more to life than to sit idly in his cell and waste away, but for many years, we had no hope of doing more. We had nothing that told us there were still possibilities for us to live a productive life. All we had were long suppressed dreams of what could have been.
Education however changed this kind of thinking. It not only gave us knowledge, it transformed our perspectives. It helps us realize the possibility of a better future and that we can still contribute something of substance to society."
-Brian Yang/Pelican Bay Scholar