Readings 10/30

Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brandt

Literacy is so widespread today that it is often taken for granted. For many people it is tough to imagine being illiterate and all the difficulties that would be involved in it. Brandt traces literacy through the last century through personal interviews with eighty people. All their experiences differ, but they are common in their shared experience with literacy. Some situations involve the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society in which literacy would take a much more prominent role. People tailored their own reading and writing skills to their particular needs, such as the prisoner who learned to read and then learned legal jargon, and finally wrote an appeal that eventually got him his freedom. The U.S. culture today certainly discriminates against the illiterate. There is no parity between those who can read and those who can’t. If you can read you are not something special, but if you can’t you are forced to the lowest edges of society.