Developing community through contribution and collaboration

The experience of teaching in Full Sutton’s two distinct communities highlighted the importance of trust and relationships in the successful delivery of a CoPI. Both halves of the

prison lacked a sense of community. A climate of distrust and a divided, oppressive atmosphere prevailed in Full Sutton. I draw primarily on Toch’s (1980) ideas of community introduced in Chapter 4. He states that community means working together, having shared interests and per-sonal investment. However, as I observed in Full Sutton, developing such principles takes on a distinct meaning when presence in a community is beyond the control of the individual.

The majority of participants had little experience of Socratic dialogue or collaborative conversation. As facilitator, I took an active role in managing discussion and emphasising the purpose and nature of philosophical dialogue. In doing this, I encouraged participants to listen to each other and explain their point of view in an articulate and succinct manner. Whereas in Grendon, philosophical dialogue came easily and the community ethos established reflected the wider prison community, in Full Sutton I had to use the basic principles of the CoPI peda-gogy (discussed in Chapter 1) to establish the ‘safe’ space for dialogue. In such circumstances, the process of facilitation, along with the content of the material, became more relevant to the experience.

Among the mainstream population, early discussions were characterised by aggressive outbursts, confrontational dialogue and boisterous conversation. However, as the classes pro-gressed, the nature of the challenge also changed. The mainstream class went from being per-sonally challenging – with participants testing my views and skills as a facilitator – to being intellectually challenging – with participants questioning everyone’s views and interrogating the subject at hand. Over time, participants’ skills in dialogue improved as they began to listen to each other and engage in inquiry in a more co-operative and collaborative manner.

Unlike the VPs, who took some encouragement to engage, participants in the main-stream class were quick to offer an opinion and confident in participating. However, the con-versation would take unpredictable, and sometimes confrontational, turns as participants ex-pressed an opinion without listening to, or engaging with, the statement made by the previous contributor. Some participants were prone to aggressive outbursts, passionately stating their case without taking heed of the nuanced arguments under discussion, and demonstrating a clear lack of respect for their fellow participants. Some seemed to enjoy ‘needling’ others, under-mining their statements and fostering discord. Power relations and masculine ‘fronts’ flowed through the conversation and I found myself in the middle of (or, more accurately, on the out-side trying to find a way into) a battle for authority and intellectual superiority that I scarcely understood.

Standing in stark contrast to the atmosphere in the mainstream philosophy class, VPs engaged in calm and respectful dialogue from the outset. The class had a positive, co-operative

atmosphere with participants eager to comply and make a good impression. As with the main-stream prisoners, VPs engaged in the dialogue from the beginning. However, they required more specific encouragement to contribute. Initially, participants answered the questions I posed, when directed at them, and looked to me to find the ‘right’ answer. As they developed an understanding of what was expected of them, and the purpose of the discussions, the partic-ipants grew in confidence. The sessions became more lively and interactive with particpartic-ipants engaging with each other, challenging both their own and each other’s contributions.

Participants from both sides of the prison initially had difficulties in engaging with the broader philosophical questions the topics posed. The unpredictability of the conversation among the ‘mains’ in particular indicated inexperience in engaging in abstract thinking among some of the participants. To tackle these issues, I focussed on the purpose of the underlying philosophical conversation. I tried not to be drawn into specific or unrelated arguments (which sometimes proved difficult when participants proffered prejudiced and controversial views).

Week 2 involved a particularly tangential conversation which caused me to have a pe-riod of reflection on the ultimate purpose of the philosophy class. During the session in which participants discussed Plato’s Republic, I asked what it meant for a society to be ‘just’. In response, participants began to discuss issues around what a government can or cannot tell their people to do. However, within a couple of sentences, they had descended into a debate around whether it would be acceptable for a parent to smoke in a car with a child – a topic some distance away from the original question around how society ought to be structured. To address this, I reflected on my role as facilitator, returning to the fundamental principles of a CoPI. I reconstructed my role so that it involved a constant, careful method of posing questions in an attempt to draw the participants back to the stimuli and develop philosophical conversation. I asked questions such as ‘What does that example tell us about our identities as people?’ ‘What does that tell us about how to decide if something is right or wrong?’ ‘How would a utilitarian respond to that example?’ Drawing on the principles of Socratic dialogue techniques, through systematic questioning, I gradually encouraged participants to engage in philosophical conver-sation.

Over the course of the twelve sessions, in both groups, we made clear (albeit slow) progress towards a safe, non-adversarial dialogue. VPs became livelier and engaged in the conversation and we became more equal as a group of people (as opposed to them always looking to me for answers and confirmation of what they had said). In the mainstream, in the first few weeks I often stayed outside their adversarial and complex conversations, desperately trying to encourage them to engage in co-operative and respectful dialogue. Even in the final

two sessions, there were moments of volatility but, gradually, participants began to understand the process of philosophical dialogue, and of engaging in rational and calm discussions often involving controversial and personal topics.

In both groups, the CoPI served as a means of developing not only the dialogic skills of the participants, but the relationships between them. Over time, the ethos of a community began to emerge, with participants having a shared experience of philosophical exploration and developing a personal investment in the group (Toch, 1980). The mainstream group made clear progress towards more positive relations and a community atmosphere. Although in Weeks 10 and 11 my fieldwork notes still include comments on their ‘sniping’ and the need to remind participants of respectful discussion, there were some indications of a community atmosphere.

It was not until Week 7 that there was clear indication that participants were learning from each other and beginning to respect the insights of their fellow participants.

Right at the start of the session Jonny said that he thought Martin’s points last week had been really interesting and he had gone away and written them down and thought about them and felt Martin had come up with some really good ideas.

(Szifris, session 7, mainstream, fieldwork notes).

By this stage, participants seemed to be laughing ‘with’ each other, as opposed to ‘at’ each other and contributions became less adversarial and more co-operative. There was even a de-velopment of a shared terminology that only those in the class would understand. In an early session, during a particularly tangential contribution by a fellow participant, one of the partic-ipants had pointed at his thumb and stated that “some questions are not worth considering” as we “may as well ponder the existence of our own thumbs.” (Tony, Full Sutton, mainstream).

In later sessions, this became shorthand for contributions or tangents that were deemed irrele-vant to the core questions. Participants would comment saying, “Well it’s the thumb argument again, isn’t it” or just pointing at their thumb. This not only highlights the development of a shared terminology but also indicates the growing support for philosophical conversation among the participants. By the end of the course, several of the participants had begun assisting with facilitation by respectfully encouraging others to précis their points and stay on topic.

In the CoPI, through emerging relationships and growing trust, participants established the ethos of a community; the CoPI provided a rare, safe-haven where participants had invested time and energy into a project with others. As the course progressed, evidence of such an

emerging ‘community’ became more common. The nature of the dialogue became more col-laborative, the focus of the conversation more philosophical, and the interactions between par-ticipants more respectful.

However, a true CoPI involves collaborative exploration of an idea. This involves par-ticipants working together to develop knowledge and understanding of a particular concept.

This is a key characteristic of the community aspect of a CoPI and, although both groups pro-gressed towards it, collaborative conversation was always somewhat lacking on both sides of the prison. Among the mainstream prisoners, although the discussions did become less ego-centric, adversarial and personal, it was rare that participants actually managed to work to-gether to build understanding.²³ Among the VPs, there was more evidence of this. They were more willing to listen to each other and, as the course progressed, they became more skilled at questioning each other’s statements.