Those seem like pretty high numbers if you counted everyone who lived there, which would include a lot of slaves. Did he count them? And they all knew how to read and write? Seems dubious to me. If he did not count them, who else did he not count?
http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy
The federal department of education was created in 1867. Strange how illiteracy decreased with the expansion of schools
Re:My Web is Text Based
by nazgulnarsil on Saturday February 21, 2009 @02:14PM
(#489985)
you trust statistics from a .gov site on the efficacy of government programs?
Certainly we had public education in the 1800s(?) What is the difference between public education (like we had then) and "nanny state" education? (I'm asking this seriously...) What particular legislation would you point to as causing a change?
At the time he visited, public education was rare and voluntary. The first US law mandating attendance at school was introduced in 1852 by Massachusetts, sometime after the reported 90%+ literacy rates were achieved. (I have significant skepticism that it was actually 99.96%, but 90% sufficient to read and write at what we'd consider a grade school level these days, sure.)
Well, extrapolate the data, from a largely rural society where you could get through life without ever reading a single word, and today, where literacy is held in somewhat higher regard, and the effect of mandatory education on literacy rates doesn't look that profound.
I'd say the basic introduction to liberal arts and natural sciences are much better arguments for mandatory education than literacy rates.
996 out of a thousand would be 99.6%, but I agree with your suspicions.
Re:My Web is Text Based
by jodrellblank on Friday February 20, 2009 @07:07PM
(#489452)
"would be"? You mean it isn't?
(I've been reading http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=486574 )
Re:My Web is Text Based
by nazgulnarsil on Thursday February 19, 2009 @11:27PM
(#488314)
There was no public education on any sort of large scale until at least the 1840's, and not really widespread until the reconstruction era government.
In the early 1800s, Pierre Samuel Dupont, an influential French citizen who helped Thomas Jefferson negotiate for the Louisiana Purchase, came to America and surveyed education here. He found that most young Americans could read, write, and "cipher" (do arithmetic), and that Americans of all ages could and did read the Bible. He estimated that fewer than four Americans in a thousand were unable to write neatly and legibly.
people were fine before the advent of the nanny state in 1933.