Something strange is happening at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center. Residents are so eager to get into a Russian literature class led by the University of Virginia that prison officials use it as a reward.

The youths are clamoring to read thick books like "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, a moral thinker and non-violent pacifist who was said to have had a profound impact on Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Staff members at Beaumont see a marked change in students' behavior," according to the Washington Post article.

(READ the story in the Washington Post)