Michael Jones, 46, spent more years of his life in an 80-square-foot cell than he did with his mother.
When he was released from Smith State Prison in Glennville, Georgia, at 40, after serving 23 years on an armed robbery charge, he said he still didn’t feel free.
“The guards threw me out on my rear outside the gates with only the ratty clothes I had on when I was arrested,” Jones said. “All I knew was I had to get to Newberry to see my momma.”
Jones grew up in Newberry with his mother until he left home at 16, two years after he dropped out of Oak View Middle School. Despite eight years of public education, Jones was functionally illiterate. He had to ask seven people to read him stop names and signage on his bus journey from Glennville to Newberry, the only home he had ever known.
Jones’ story of illiteracy is shared among 20% of Americans, or 43 million people, according to a 2019 study from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. In Florida, estimates from the Institute of Education Sciences in 2017 indicate that illiteracy rates are between 24 to 26%.
Sarah Marsh, 28, leads an adult education program for Marion County Public Schools. She’s seen almost 300 adults with varying backgrounds and education levels pass through her program.
“Obviously we don’t have any college graduates come through our doors,” Marsh said, “but we have helped several adults who were moved from grade to grade until they graduated high school, without ever actually learning reading comprehension.”
Marsh began her career as a 9th grade teacher in Philadelphia, where she faced what she described as inescapable pressure to pass students.
“In my first year of teaching, I had 32 students in my class,” she said. “Seven of them were functionally illiterate — as freshmen in high school.”
Functional illiteracy is the most common of three identified types of illiteracy, a system of classification that Florida Adult Literacy League employee Sharon Shane has studied for 10 years.
“Saying that someone is illiterate often isn’t the whole story,” she said. “People who are functionally illiterate can still identify letters and their sounds, which is often enough for educators to turn the other cheek and move them up to the next grade.”
Shane says school officials are contributing to illiteracy more than fighting it at times.
“The school-to-prison pipeline has been proven to exist and some educators are maliciously guiding their students to jail,” she said. “The easiest child to put in prison, jail or juvie is one who doesn’t know their rights.”
KJ Johnson didn’t know his rights when, at 14, a school resource officer led him into a dark, isolated classroom and interrogated him about a small bag of marijuana found under his desk in his 8th grade English class. Johnson didn’t know that he had the right to leave at any time, or to ask for his parents to be called.
After what he described as three hours of the older, white officer yelling about “thugs” like him, Johnson burst into tears and said the drugs were his. He was sent to the Marion Regional Juvenile Detention Center, missing his 8th grade graduation, freshman year homecoming and two crucial years of education.
Johnson, now 25, works with Community Spring, a grassroots organization focusing on empowering disadvantaged groups to economic security. His primary goal is the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated people to society.
“Literacy is the single most powerful tool a person can have in their arsenal,” he said. “Not just being able to read good books, but things that we take for granted like reading street signs and understanding the contracts we’re signing.”
Part of the re-entry preparations Johnson organizes for incarcerated people about to be released is a series of one-on-one literacy sessions. “I go down to the jail or prison and sit with the guy about to come out, and I’m honest with him,” Johnson said. “I tell him things don’t get easier when they leave.
Nothing falls magically into place just because you’re out of jail.” In fact, for some people who have spent most of their lives incarcerated, life outside their cell is infinitely harder.
“Some people can’t handle it,” Johnson said. “At first, even I couldn’t handle it, and I only spent two years in juvie with a loving family ready to welcome me back when I got out.”
Acclimation to life outside of prison is aided in part by an adult literacy class hosted at the headquarters branch of the Alachua County Public Library, one of Johnson’s recommendations to the formerly incarcerated people he works with.
Laura Harvey, 54, has been volunteering with the public library’s class for two years, during which she has seen many of the same faces come back for class after class.
“It’s easy for people to take what they have learned for granted and scoff at people who didn’t get those same opportunities,” she said. “Knowledge is too important not to want to share with everyone.”