While I was in federal prison (one year, just released months ago) I actually tried to setup a crash course that prepared inmates for the "real world" and teach

While I was in federal prison (one year, just released months ago) I actually tried to setup a crash course that prepared inmates for the "real world" and teach basic skills. This is through a program in the federal prison system (BOP) called ACE - Adult Continuing Education. I sat down and spoke with the manager of the program at the prison. She barely removed her eyes from her computer screen and when I was done proposing my idea she just shrugged and said "that's not something we want to invest time into." I then asked her if she thought these skills were more necessary today than yesterday and compared to 5 years ago - basically establishing that this is only going to get worse not better. She just repeated that "this isn't what the BOP wants to do." It's worth mentioning what those ACE classes currently consist of. The ones I saw while I was in prison ranged from basic math/arithmetic (addition, multiplication, very basic algebra) to poetry and origami. Which is interesting because it would paint the picture that people in prison are dumb or not learning anything, whereas they actually are learning quite a lot since they have little else to occupy themselves with besides books - especially during COVID times (since we were essentially locked down the entire time during the pandemic while I was incarcerated) I met many inmates that were learning complex math and physics, computer programming and I met some that had never seen the "real world" in any capacity with Bitcoin or other emerging technologies that had a decent grasp of how they operated from the various books they had read.