[lbo-talk] literacy

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 19 20:37:11 PDT 2003


Well, look at a McGuffy's Reader for, say, the Fifth Grade -- as far as most Americans got in those days. It was prety demanding stuff. You wouldn't expect it to be within the grasp of current 5th graders -- or a lot of grownups.

On the same point, in the old days, 50 years ago, Life and Look Magazines -- picture mags -- had articles pitched at a pretty high level. I hav an old issue of Look with an article on Lenin -- The Evil Genuis Who Lauynched Global Red Threat. Accomapnying it is a long, hostile, but reasonably fair and fairly accurate summary of the basics of Marxist thought, along with a discussion of Hegel's dialectic. Anyone seen anything that might be described as even a coherent attempt to discuss (say) Islamic theology in Life, Time, or Newsweek lately?

jks

--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 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?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
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