[lbo-talk] literacy

[Kelley]

At 02:13 PM 10/19/03 -0400, you wrote:
>After we were on a panel together at CUNY a couple of weeks ago, Giovanni 
>Arrighi told me that U.S. workers were more literate a century ago than 
>today. I found that very hard to believe, but I didn't have the facts to 
>make the argument. Does anyone here know about this?

Arrighi's still at Binghamton, right?

maybe he's talking about the widely discussed book about the US education 
system by a former teacher, JOhn Taylor Gatto. An excerpt was published in 
Harper's recently. Parts of it were also widely-touted among rightwingers 
because he's critical of the public education system. He makes something 
like this claim, here, http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm -- 
that literacy has actually declined over the last century.

IIRC, though, it doesn't seem like the National Literacy Survey stats bear 
this claim out.

kelley