[geeks] geeks Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Brian Dunbar]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Jonathan Patschke <jp at celestrion.net> wrote:

> Only 20% of US adults were illiterate in 1870[0], prior to most states
> funding their schools with taxation, and certainly prior to any large
> percentage of the population passing through school in the states that
> did[1].  That's nowhere near a majority.  Also in 1870, the US was a far
> more agrarian society--many people simply didn't have a daily need to read
> and write.  There are market incentives for people to develop some degree
> of literacy in the 21st century.

In the 17th - 19th centuries on the American frontier there was a
strong cultural bias to literacy: protestant dogma held that every man
should interpret the Bible for themselves.  To do this you had to
read.

Nearly always the first public building a frontier community would
erect would be a schoolhouse.

--
Brian Dunbar
Geidus

"Display some adaptability"