X-no-Archive:yes
Remarkable. Thanks! The Massachusetts references are something, and we've
been to "Old Sturbridge Village" enough times that I recognize the building
in which the photograph was taken.

Time permitting, I will give both articles a better read, as I did not quite
get from skimming them how literate Americans were in Jefferson's time. I
was also struck by a very different vision of what can be meant by "public
schools".

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 5:02 PM
To: Stigers, Greg [And]; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: PBS School: The Story of American Public Education

Here are two reasonable and very brief summaries that outline the dramatic
rise in literacy that accompanied the formation of the United States:

     http://www.stockton.edu/%7Egilmorew/0amnhist/comuhis5.htm
     http://www.myhistory.org/historytopics/articles/education_to_1877.html

Both are short enough that they should be read twice in order to a get a
full
sense of the information that they contain. Moreover, the two articles offer

differing emphases regarding why literacy rose so rapidly in the period 1780

to 1850. The first argues economic value: that reading rapidly became a
necessity of life. The second argues that literacy was considered a
fundamental responsibility of citizenship in this newest and most democratic

of all countries. Both reasons were true and they worked very much together
"as realistic conservative synergies that made their values accretive in the

first years of the nineteenth century.''

By the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, the United States had become the

most literate country in the world.

Wirt Atmar

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