About 20 years ago, a man I was incarcerated with asked me to help him learn to read. Crane* had tried to take the classes the prison offered, but he was in his 50s with a spinal injury, and was struggling with the hard seats and the restroom passes that sometimes took over an hour to become available. It was also difficult to face the ridicule of younger students, and the constant reminder that he was “stupid.”
At the time, Crane couldn’t read the words on his Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) identification card; he didn’t know the shapes of the letters of the alphabet. But he felt that the teacher didn’t believe he really couldn’t read, and wasn’t invested in helping him learn. After a while, he stopped going to class.
I’ve never had any formal training to be a teacher, but I couldn’t say no. I found a copy of a large-print Reader’s Digest, and off we went. We worked together for about an hour a day, four or five days a week. I made flashcards for letters, and then for words. Less than a year later, I saw Crane reading a letter from his daughter by himself, for the first time. It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced. I’m not sure who cried more, him or me.
Though the commonly cited statistics tend to be from many years ago, it’s estimated that at least 60 percent of adults incarcerated in the United States can’t read at a fourth-grade level. Illiteracy has a profound impact on almost anyone. But in prison it has a direct and immediate impact on family connection.
Crane asked me for help not just because he wanted to learn to read, but because of the steep consequences of not knowing. Since he was assigned to be in the education classes, not showing up meant he got a disciplinary writeup. In addition to losing the privilege of purchasing clothes and hygiene packages, he also lost visitation privileges and couldn’t see his family for six months.
When you go to prison, handwritten letters become the foundation of a lot of communication with people on the outside. Access to phones is often limited, and the calls are expensive. Shame causes many people to hide the fact that they can’t read from their families, and so they’ll receive letters that they’re not able to read or respond to without help.
“I fear the state will use the fact that educational material is on the tablet, and take away in-person learning.”
Earlier in 2025, everyone in TDOC custody was issued tablets for the first time. They come with a lot of things for prisoners to blow their money on, but they also have lots of free educational materials from GED prep to culinary art classes. Yet there’s no coordination at all between the tablet contents and the education courses taught in prison; students also can’t take their tablets to class, so they can’t even show the teachers what they’re working on and ask questions about it.
“It would be great if I could help a student with difficult math problems he is having trouble getting through on his tablet,” one teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, told Filter. They said that it seems like the quality of educational material on the tablets is a lot higher than the curricula they use in class.
A prisoner who works as an aide in the education department echoed the same sentiment.
“I fear the state will use the fact that educational material is on the tablet, and take away in-person learning,” they said. “Some students can work independently and thrive, where others need personal guidance.”
Over the years I’ve helped two other people learn to read, though they both started from a place of already knowing the alphabet. Anecdotally, I’ve seen that these days people under 40 or so who struggle to read have picked up a bit of it through social media, whereas older folks who didn’t use social media before prison get passed by.
The tablets don’t allow us to access the internet, but they come with a learning curve of their own. Though older prisoners may struggle more in class than the younger generation, that doesn’t mean that moving everything onto the tablets would benefit them. What made the difference for Crane was one-on-one tutoring—that, and being able to take bathroom breaks whenever he needed them.
A couple of months ago, a new guy in the prison was talking on the phone, saw me and motioned me to come over. It was Crane. He handed me the phone and I spent the next few minutes talking to his daughter, who thanked me for helping her dad learn to read all those years ago. She said she wasn’t sure they would be as close as they were today if he couldn’t read her letters.
*Name has been changed to protect source
Image (cropped) via New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision