[AT] Fwd: 100 years ago

[Indiana Robinson]

On 27 Apr 2006 at 12:37, Mike Sloane wrote:

> As far as the fact that 2 out of 10 adults could not read or write, I 
> question that, as public schooling, at least through the fifth grade, 
> had been around for at least a century in this country. In fact, I 
> suspect that, aside from immigrants, most adults were probably more 
> literate than adults today - the main source of news and entertainment 
> was reading newspaper and books.



	In your part of the world (north east) you are probably right but you have to take in 
to account a lot of other factors... In my area I knew a lot of adults back in 
the 40's and 50's that could not read or write. Many of them had come 
from the poor parts of KY, TN and other poor parts of the south. Then you also
 had a lot of poor blacks and former slaves who were never taught to read
 and write. Much of the southwest was sparsely populated and much of that
 was spanish speaking and if you were fluent in spanish that didn't count.
 Neither did reading and writing native american tongues. Even when I was
 in the southwest in the late1950's we didn't have to get all that far off of the
 beaten path on reservations to find folks that didn't speak english. The kids usually did but
 many adults didn't. Hell, there is a Dutch community 12 miles southwest of me where 
I can hardly talk with them today. Old community, very tight, some were still wearing 
wooden shoes as work shoes. The kids used English but many adults didn't.
	Another factor that sometimes gets kicked in there would be US possessions
 including places like Alaska with high native populations. Some of the islands...
	I also believe mental retardation was much more common then than now and many
 with that problem were not encouraged to attend school at all at that time.
	There were a lot of folks then as today that could read a little but not enough to count
 but back then it was easier to fake it and pretend to be reading. I remember my father
 speaking of an old neighbor that "read" his newspaper out on the porch daily but didn't always
 notice if he had it right side up or not...   :-)


--
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Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net