> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >I really hate nostalgia. Especially nostalgia based merely on personal
> >experience extended to a nation of nearly 200 million or so.
Hi all,
Obviously, some of those who complain about educational (and civilizational) decline are just conservatives who want to decry the modern world, motivated more by a spiteful nostalgia than any true sense of how the past differed from the present. But to return to the original question (are we more literate as a society now than a century ago?) I don't think that we can give any clear-cut answer that points to absolute progress or regress.
Of course it is very difficult to measure literarcy rates across history, especially since the modern state only began monitoring such things fairly recently. But there are historians who have tackled this problem (pre-emently Harvey J. Graff in the Labrynth of Literarcy), as well as the related issue of cultural literacy (here I think the best work is done by Lawrence Levine in his book Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America).
Anyways, based on these writers and a few others, here is how I understand the issues:
1) Among white men, a high rate of literarcy was achieved in northern europe and the Americas as long ago as the 18th century. What we've seen in more recent time is a spread of literarcy among groups that were previously excluded, including women and especially racial minorities (prior to emanicapation, many jurisdications made it a crime to teach slaves how to read and write; and of course under Jim Crow eduation was strictly rationed out to African Americans).
2) While contemporary literarcy is more widespread than that of the past (i.e., more people have at least a smattering of book knowledge) it is also shallower. People these days are more adept at skimming a vast array of sources; in the past, people would have access to few books, but be more likely to read and re-read them carefully. I think the best evidence of this can be seen in working class writers of the 18th and 19th century. These writers seem to have read a few key books (the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress) very carefully, since their work is filled with recurrent allustions to them.
3) If we look at cultural literarcy more broadly, we have to understand that in the past people often became acquainted with literature not just by reading but also in a variety of social activities (church, theatres, public lectures). In that sense, 19th century American had an impressive access to their cultural heritage. Levine provides a great deal of evidence that untill the late 19th century, Shakespeare was very much a part of the fabric of popular culture in America. Ordinary people would go to his plays (which were interspersed with popular entertainment like music hall shows and minstrel performances). Allusions to Shakespeares writings can commonly be found in the popular press of the 19th century and in the letters ordinary people wrote. Even among the most marginalized citizens of 19th century America, slaves, Shakespeare was performed and popular. Only in the late 19th century did Shakespeare start becoming the exclusive preserve of the elite.
In sum, we've both gained and lost over time. A higher rate of education has been offset by other changes which have reduced the depth with which people read as well as limiting popular access to high culture.