And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention

Hear the mournful yet resolute words of Walter Dean Myers, the writer who gave voice to the voiceless: “And I see the—you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can’t read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they’re not going to be able to make it in our society.” These words are not merely observations; they are cries of warning, cries of sorrow, and cries of truth. For Myers saw with his own eyes the broken circle: young souls cast into captivity, stripped not only of freedom but of the tools needed to survive in the world beyond the walls.

The ancients knew well that knowledge is the torch that lights the path of freedom. A man who cannot read is a man left in darkness, unable to see the laws that bind him, the opportunities that call him, or the wisdom that could shape his way. To deny a child the gift of literacy is to condemn him to stumble, unarmed, into a world that demands understanding. Myers, who himself once struggled with reading as a child, knew the pain of being left behind. His voice was not one of judgment, but of compassion and urgency: without literacy, liberation is incomplete.

Consider the fate of Frederick Douglass, born into slavery. Forbidden to read, he understood that this denial was no accident but the deliberate shackle of ignorance. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free,” he proclaimed. By teaching himself letters in secret, he broke chains more powerful than iron, for literacy opened the doors to freedom, oratory, and leadership. Douglass’s story stands as a mirror to Myers’s warning: those who leave prison without learning to read remain bound, even when their physical chains are removed.

History reveals too the connection between education and freedom for entire peoples. In the Reconstruction era of the United States, freedmen built schools as their first act of liberty, for they knew that only through literacy could they rise in a hostile society. And yet, even then, resistance was fierce; ignorance was seen as a weapon to be kept upon them. Myers’s lament shows us that in many ways, this struggle continues. When the young leave detention still unable to read, they are thrust back into a cycle of poverty, crime, and exclusion, unable to claim their rightful place in the world.

Thus, O child of tomorrow, understand the weight of Myers’s words: prisons and detention centers should not be factories of despair, but workshops of renewal. If they do not teach reading, they release souls still captive, unable to navigate the simplest demands of modern life. Without books, forms, or knowledge, such men and women are condemned to wander, rejected by a society that expects from them what it never gave. The prison bars may open, but the invisible cage of ignorance remains.

Let your heart be stirred, then, not only to pity but to action. If you would change the future, begin with literacy. Read to the young, teach those who struggle, and demand that no institution, however grim, withholds education. For every letter learned is a key, every book read a door, every word understood a step toward dignity and freedom. To teach a person to read is to give them a compass by which to navigate the storms of life.

In practice, cherish your own learning and extend it to others. Volunteer where literacy is lacking, support schools, mentor the young. Do not think the problem too large to touch, for even one person lifted from ignorance can ripple outward to generations. Remember always that the strongest walls are not made of stone, but of silence and illiteracy. Break them with knowledge, as Douglass did, as Myers pleaded, as you yourself can do.

So I say unto you: heed Walter Dean Myers’s cry. Reading is not a luxury but a weapon, not a pastime but a path to freedom. A society that denies it condemns itself, for its prisons will overflow while its future starves. But a people who light the lamp of literacy for all will find that no prison can hold the human spirit, and no chain can bind the mind awakened by words.