This week is American Education Week.
Last week, I posted about a webpage I'd found that claimed the literacy rate among volunteers for military duty in America in the 1930's was 98%, and that this fell off to 96% ten years later... essentially, no significant change.
Today, I found an article out of Maryland that starts off by saying that 21% of World War One draftees were illiterate. It goes on to say that, based on that high illiteracy rate, "...representatives of the National Education Association and the American Legion met in 1919 to seek ways to generate public support for education..." Apparently, whatever efforts were made to improve literacy in 1919 paid off quite well with literacy going from 79% to 98% in two short decades, and remaining basically level into World War Two.
After World War II, however, the literacy rate began sinking again, and by 1970 it was down below the levels seen in the WWI draftees. Apparently, whatever methods that were employed to bring literacy up between the first and second world wars worked, and whatever methods have been used since world war two have failed.
One thing stands out to me in all of this: it's difficult to find dependable historical metrics after world war two that aren't increasingly tainted by the need to make teachers look good...
Monday, November 17, 2008
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2 comments:
Jeff,
I'm not sure where you got the WWII stats (it does not seem to be on the Maryland link; maybe it was?), but I have a suspicion. With stats like that, it's not uncommon for the sample to change over time. I doubt, in this case, that the population we're looking at is identical between the wars. For example, we had a segregated military in WWI; were we really testing everyone? What sort of a cross-section were we drafting in WWI versus in WWII versus who enters the military now?
This is why, for example, the US has in the past few decades often had what seemed like abysmal scores in science, etc., compared to the rest of the world. We send everyone to high school, and test everyone. Other countries traditionally (and this isn't as true anymore) channel their "non-college" kids out of academic high schools, and they don't take those tests.
None of which is to say that US education is perfect. I would also, yes, as a former teacher, argue that there's plenty of fault to go around here, and it hardly all rests on the shoulders of teachers.
Thanks for the heads up on American Education Week!
Hi Jeff,
It is interesting what you have found in John Taylor Gatto's book, but I think it reflects the dangers of statistics.
All we know is that the recruiting sergeants in the 30s were happy to take these men.
In reality, literacy was not a key issue for the military back then.
20 years later that had changed. The sophistication of the equipment had leapt forward and being educated and literate had become essential to be a useful soldier.
If you come across educational statistics backing up his figures, I would be surprised.
I hope that this is a help,
Best wishes David
David Morgan
www.easyreadsystem.com
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