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![Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy,
learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can put independent and even rebellious ideas in the heads of
their subjects. The British Royal Governor of the Colony of
Virginia wrote in 1671:
I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope
we shall not have [them] these [next] hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into
the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against
the best government. God keep us from both!
But the American colonists, understanding where liberty lies,
would have none of this.
In its early years, the United States boasted one of the highest -
perhaps the highest - literacy rates in the world. (Of course, slaves
and women didn't count in those days.) As early as 1635, there
had been public schools in Massachusetts, and by 1647 compul-
sory education in all townships there of more than fifty 'house-
holds'. By the next century and a half, educational democracy had
spread all over the country. Political theorists came from other
countries to witness this national wonder: vast numbers of ordi-
nary working people who could read and write. The American
devotion to education for all propelled discovery and invention, a
vigorous democratic process, and an upward mobility that
pumped the nation's economic vitality.
Today, the United States is not the world leader in literacy. Many
of those judged literate are unable to read and understand very
simple material - much less a sixth-grade textbook, an instruction
manual, a bus schedule, a mortgage statement, or a ballot initiative.
And the sixth-grade textbooks of today are much less challenging
than those of a few decades ago, while the literacy requirements at
the workplace have become more demanding than ever before.
The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-
esteem mesh to create a kind of](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ksqbpcojqaz34gi2slhsyole/bafkreidnzzg3b7ls4duhjdzmpxabctf7kxhsgnqvdmx5st7psbu76qyan4)
