On p. 153 of Why Philanthropy Matters, Zoltan J. Acs writes,
Early Americans in New England and the Chesapeake region, and later throughout the West, established schools in the majority of towns and villages. There was no legal requirement to do this, nor any norm adapted from other countries. Among white Americans, the literacy rate was arguably the highest in the world by 1800.
This contrasts with the Goldin-Katz narrative of American exceptionalism in education, which is that universal public schooling was our unique contribution. This made me wonder whether universal public schooling was a sui generis innovation or a government take-over of a system that already was working well. Searching around, I found an article from The Freeman in 1983, by Robert A. Peterson.
for two hundred years in American history, from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s, public schools as we know them to day were virtually non-existent, and the educational needs of America were met by the free market. In these two centuries, America produced several generations of highly skilled and literate men and women who laid the foundation for a nation dedicated to the principles of freedom and self-government.
…A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly.
But I thought it was a German contribution which was enthusiastically studied and copied by the Americans.
The “and write legibly” bit of the last quote is significant. It was much harder to write than read at the time, and often people were taught to read (the bible) but not taught to write.
…A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly.
— 99.6% literacy in 1800 seems very hard to believe. In fact, 99.6% literacy among Ivy League college graduates in 2012 might be pushing it.
It is certainly useful to question the accepted narrative with regard to schooling, but accurate data on modern schooling effectiveness is hard to come by and data on schooling in the 19th century must be taken as a very approximate guess at best.
Does seem a touch high. I can’t remember the exact source, other than it was quoted in ‘Separating School and State’, but I do recall that MA’s high watermark on literacy was the year *before* it established public schooling, and the gap has kept widening.
Tocqueville commented that he could walk up to any rustic cabin in Illinois, and find in it a Bible and a recent newspaper, and that the owner would be well acquainted with both and able to discuss issues of both religion and politics.
That common people could do this was something rather stunning to him, when contrasted with the lower classes in France.
When I looked into this a couple of years ago, it seemed like poor children were not served well by the private education market prior to universal public schooling. That kinda makes sense because, you know, how would they pay?
It’s quite possible however that over time, a mediocre public school system crowded out a good private system for middle class children.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Beautiful-Tree-Educating-Themselves/dp/1933995920
DuPont’s number can’t be right… IIRC, Abe Lincoln’s father was mostly illiterate and signed his name with an ‘X’. He was working a frontier farm all day!
I wouldn’t be surprised if a high number of *households* were literate… they would have one or two people who could read to the others. Usually the children, who got some school in before they were strong enough to work full time.
Is that so different from the Chinese family who opens a laundromat here in the States and sends their kids to MIT?
I came across ‘Confessions of a School Master’ by William A. Allcott (1839) in the Internet Archive. It is supposedly true recollections of a school master after 10 years of service. I’ve skimmed parts. I found a remark from his second year about some older students wanting to learn arithmetic, almost exclusively. The teacher was concerned about the parents of the younger students since arithmetic wasn’t normally taught in day school.
This to me puts the schooling in perspective. They taught reading and writing but how much of the rest?
Not unsurprisingly, the book particulars are different but the book probably is not much different in personal trials and tribulations that might be written by a teacher today.
I think that, then as now, schools are pressured to teach what is seen as relevant and needed and “Education” tends to get defined as “Getting taught what you need to make a living”.
If at the time, literacy was the standard of being educated, then that would be what was taught. Is it any different than today’s push for STEM classes, college prep classes, and (for better or for worse) SAT prep?
I don’t have time to read the link just now, but my first thought is a skepticism that DuPont has 1) cast a very wide net and 2) adopted a very high standard of literacy and writing. I can think of many people in America, though perhaps not citizens, denied the ability to read and write in 1800.
On the other hand, to support this angle that the state is mangling ed, you might look to homeschooling. Though few families today can afford it, homeschooled children have a reputation for doing very well academically.
Edwin G. West showed that near-universal schooling and literacy preceded both compulsion and public provision in the United States. (His case study, I recall, was the State of New York.) See, for example, the book Government Failure: E.G. West on Education, edited by James Tooley and James Stanfield (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 2003. This can be downloaded and viewed at
http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook223pdf.pdf