Re: Heads-up: Possible Televisual Recovery

Jasper Janssen <jasper@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:59:00 -0600, Robert Uhl <eadmund42@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In fairness, literacy rates were higher before compulsory public
education than after it and road maintenance was an old common-law
duty for those who lived along them.

And, in fairness, only the people that lived along them actually
*used* those roads, unlike today.

??? They were used as much and as little as roads today.

As for the first claim.. cite?

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm>: "Looking back,
abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to
show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States
was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According
to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was
illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people
in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular
novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in
1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10
million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find
yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners,
politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed
in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and
well-educated reader can handle it nowadays."

The literacy rate today is claimed to be 99% by the CIA; InfoPlease
claims 97% in 1979; the National Assessment of Adult Literacy found 14%
of adults with below a 'basic' literacy rate (which is literate, but not
very). Granted, Connecticut was but one state, but at the time its
literacy rate was 99.83%.

This link refutes my contention, but is interesting nonetheless.

<http://tinyurl.com/5t2g>: "Most of the measured increase in literacy
had already occurred by the time a nationwide system of government
schools and compulsory attendance was established."

--
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
to the earlier joke. --Mike Andrews
.

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