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
The historical census of the US: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/
see also http://nces.ed.gov/naal/historicaldata/illiteracy.asp
do have illiteracy stats by different categories which can be compiled into trends with relative ease, I suppose, but such figures can be deceiving.
The chief reason is the so-called functional illiteracy which denoted the nominal capacity to recognize letters and single words, but inability to read and comprehend paragraphs or even sentences. According to the US Department of Education, about half of the US population (49%) is functionally illiterate. That is a frightening number, because reading and writing is more essential in modern society than it was a hundred or more years ago. That is to say, if weight in the importance of reading and writing as a life skill, an x% illiteracy (or functional illiteracy) in 2003 is far worse than the same percentage in 1903.
A related problem is the quality of the material being read. It could be argued that a 1903 worker read on average a higher quality material than a 2003 worker, or that the high quality material / trash ratio was on average higher for workers in 1903 than in 2003, because: (1) printing books was more expensive and thus trashy and frivolous stuff that make the bulk of pop-kultur today were not as abundant and more expensive to get in 1903; and (2) longer working hours and higher demands on workers time make leisure - and by implication reading - time more scarce for the working class, and that would imply a more judicious use of that time (i.e. reading stuff that really mattered as opposed to reading junk just to kill time).
Another problem is the proportion of information acquired by reading to that acquired from non-printed sources. It is important because arguably requires a higher level of concentration and cognitive skill and activity than watching or hearing, which are more passive. It can be argued that a higher proportion of information - at least about matters other than immediate everyday life circumstances - was acquired via reading in 1903 than in 2003.
With that in mind, I would measure literacy in three dimensions: (1) functional illiteracy by socio-economic status and race; (2) readership of "quality material," such as non-fiction books, or serious (by historical standards) newspapers and magazines, again by socio-economic class and race; and (3) the time devoted to reading as a share of all time spent on entertainment and leisure (that can be difficult to obtain, since time budget studies are poorly developed in the US, although the BLS has been conducting one in 2003).
Wojtek