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'Literacy Rose ... To Between 91 And 97 Percent'
by Vin Suprynowicz

Last time, one Carol A. Davis wrote in: "Since Mr. Suprynowicz is allowed to take almost a half of a page making, just one more time, the RJ’s constant point that ‘public schools just ain’t no damn good,’" (March 26) "why doesn’t he enlighten us some more. I want to hear all about the educated populace at the time of our Founding Fathers which he refers to in his closing paragraph. Who was educated and who wasn’t? To use this argument, Mr. V., you should be willing to back it up with facts. Prove you are correct, please, I want to learn."

Last week, we began by citing some of the findings of New York City and State (government school) Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, from his book The Underground History of American Education (available free online – and I heartily recommend you peruse the original).

Ms. Davis will doubtless object that this is only one source – though Mr. Gatto has impeccable credentials and his research is well documented.

OK, here’s more. Matthew Brouillette, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, writes: "According to author Barry Poulson, ‘Private education was widely demanded in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Great Britain and America. The private supply of education was highly responsive to that demand, with the consequence that large numbers of children from all classes of society received several years of education.’ (Barry W. Poulson, "Education and the Family During the Industrial Revolution," in Joseph R. Peden and Fred R. Glahe, eds., The American Family and the State, San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1986, p. 138.)

"Not only was private education in demand, but it was quite successful. Literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent between 1800 and 1840, the years prior to compulsory schooling and governmental provision and operation of education. In the South during the same time period, the rate grew among the white population from between 50 and 60 percent to 81 percent. (Sheldon Richman, Separating School & State, p. 38.) ..."

This year, by comparison, a study by the American Institutes for Research found that more than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges in 2006 "lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials." These are today’s college kids, mind you – supposedly the cream of the American crop, youths on whose schooling our unionized government propaganda camps have squandered more treasure per pupil than any other society in history. Any other project of this size that failed so badly would be dynamited. Unless, of course ... the schooling institution is doing precisely what it was designed to do.

After the 1840s, Mr. Brouillette reports, "Government control of schooling was intended to bring education to a larger segment of the population, but the result was that it simply pushed aside existing private schools without substantially increasing overall enrollment rates....