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There’s a proverb that says: “a man has to be handsome at 20, strong at 30, rich at 40 and wise at 50”.
But at 20 I wished to be all at the same time.
I practiced aggravated assault. I was condemned to 45 years in jail.
Brazil has about half million prisoners. About 50% work. Less than 10% study.
ProUni is helping me a lot because I couldn’t pay the dues.
I got the 4th place in faculty’s admission test.
It wasn’t difficult because I give classes as an education monitor inside prison.
Now we are starting a new semester.
I don’t want to expose myself because I am treated as a normal person.
I want that it continues this way. I don’t want to be favored neither rejected because of it.
Each one has a point of view. One would think “poor guy” and other could think “will he rob me?”.
You can’t avoid. Prejudice will always exist.
I don’t have to prove nothing to anyone. I have to live each day doing what is right.
Adding days of work and school, I will abate four years of my penalty.
Three days of presence at the classroom, which equals 12 h, means one day less in jail.
This has nothing to do with learning.
Participate is easy, the problem is to continue.
We disagree about this quantitative principle because education works with long run goals.
Before I went to jail, I study until fundamental. It was very weak.
For these people, religion failed, family failed, school failed.
For the majority of them, prison is the last chance to develop themselves as human beings.
It happened to me. I discovered my potential as a human being during 10 years of sentence.
I looked around me and I saw that I was alone, that I depended only of myself.
I had to stick to something. I started to feel pleasure reading.
Machado de Assis, Álvares de Azevedo, Camilo Castelo Branco...
I believe that next year I will be transferred to open conditions.
It will be cool because it will be my graduation year.