My Thoughts on "Raw Material" by Jane Maher

    After reading “Raw Material” by Jane Maher, I began to think about how a person’ values on subjects such as reading and writing can differ greatly from one another. The prisoners who were in the college program that the author, Jane Maher, described in her essay seemed to be more enthusiastic about what she taught than the students that she mentioned teaching outside of the prison. As for reason for where there enthusiasm comes from, I believe it was made clear near the end of the essay as Maher talked about how these prisoners were disconnected from the world outside of their jail cell. This reason could explain why the prisoners are putting in as much effort as described by Jane Maher in “Raw Material,” they want some form of connection to the outside world and this college program was their only way of experiencing it. It makes sense as there are theories, such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, that explain that a person’s need some sort of social interaction with the world in order to feel satisfy with their life.
    Other than the reasoning behind the prisoners’ want to continue their education in this college program, there wasn’t much that I wanted to know about. This doesn’t mean that Jane Maher didn’t introduce anything else interesting in “Raw Material” because there is a lot of stuff she described in it. The first thing that comes to mind was that one of the prisoners she taught had manage to publish one of their writing pieces on a magazine, this little detail could lead to some interesting questions. Then there was the officer named Joe that Jane Maher talk to about writing a book or essay but his life changed after suffering a heart attack, there may be some people who would be interested in learning if he continued writing or not. There is a lot of material in this essay that could make for some good discussions but I don't exactly want to write about any of those topics due to my lack of interest in them.
    In any case I felt that Jane Maher manage to write something fairly interesting in “Raw Material,” about her experience teaching a bunch of prisoners in the college program that was put in place in that prison.