The Wave of Literacy (wk 3)

Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brand pointed out that literacy acquisition in America and among Americans took different dimensions depending on who you were in terms of race, class, and gender, and where you lived. People were not giving equal educational opportunities, and it is interesting to know that at the turn of events and time, like other Americans, African Americans have been under pressures of waves of social, economic, and communication changes associated with migrations from farms to cities and shifts from industrial manufacturing to information-based work (109). So reading and writing became very vital in order to blend with the advent of change as those who were literate were chosen over those who were not. Brandt says that sponsorship of literacy among the blacks basically was the church and family members. And among the whites and Latino families, mothers contributed a lot by reading to their children at home. In The Sacred and the Profane, Brandt says that by the 1830’s in England, unlike reading, with its direct and traditional connection to piety and Bible study, writing was considered too secular, worldly, and vocational and too strongly associated with upward mobility (a process that conservative church leaders wanted no part in encouraging) (146). In other words, writing was seen as something that should not be tempered with to avoid corruption of any kind I guess. But Bandit quoting Thomas Langueur recounted that an antiwriting movement was afoot to stop it. However, it is ironical to note that while in America, church sponsored literacy at the early stage especially among the blacks, in England, in the nineteenth-century, church kicked against writing. The question is: how would people read without writing?