You'd think Pauline Hord would have served her time by now. After all, she recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and by the time she achieved that breathtaking(激动人心的) milestone, she'd already done a 10-year stretch in the Mississippi State Prison.
Ms. Hord is a sweet-natured, gentle-talking, white-haired Southerner who never owed a debt to society—thus, she never had to pay one. So you have to wonder what a woman like this is doing in a place where most people are itching to get loose. Unlike the rest of the population, Ms. Hord goes to prison freely and eagerly. And when she gets there, she persuades prisoners of every sort to sing little ditties(短歌谣) about their ABCs and XYZs.
At age 80, Ms. Hord began teaching prisoners to read during a chance visit to the State Prison with a lawyer friend. "When I got there, I heard that a group of volunteer workers had been praying for a teacher. They asked me if I would come and I said I would be thrilled(非常激动的）," she said.
On a personal level, Ms. Hord considers this rewarding work. "If you get at the reason why these men went into crime, you will find that none of them succeeded in their early years of schooling. They went to school at 5 believing they were going to learn to read. When they didn't learn in the first or second grade, they realized something was wrong. By 8, they were having problems. By 12 or 13, they were drinking or using drugs. And it's getting worse. I'm seeing younger and younger prisoners who know less and less. They can't read well enough to function in this society," she said.
It is this situation that Ms. Hord goes to prison week after week to correct. And when her most difficult students finally begin to read, she is sure that she, too, knows why the caged birds sing.