Universal Literacy

Since the earliest times, literacy was the mark of education; it was the prized possession of jurists, legislators, priests, and generals, no doubt for its enormous practical value, but also, surely for its intrinsic beauty and power. For what other reason do hieroglyphics in their thousands graffiti the walls of the Egyptian palaces? As wealth increases, so education envelops a larger proportion of the population, so alphabets develop partly to simplify the problems of teaching language, so that around the Mediterranean, noun-pictures become syllabic pictures, and finally abstract letters, whereas in China the Mandarin alphabet has been horribly complex up until very recently, when a concerted effort is being made to simplify it. A body of higher knowledge preserves civilization, but literacy is at the root, and taught from the earliest age.

In the last three centuries we have reached the logical conclusion of this historical process (and be quiet, I'm not a Whig), where everyone can read and most can write. Now obviously not everyone can, but this is a fault of inefficiencies and philosophical stupidities in the present pedagogical system rather than inherent limitations in the possibility of universal literacy.

Now the democratic system of government depends upon universal literacy. Over the course of the 19th century the Liberal and Tory parties of England debated the wisdom of extending the franchise. It was a chief complaint of the Tories that Englishman without an education couldn't be expected to participate in government, and it was a chief effort of the Liberal party to give everyone that education, precisely as a rebuttal to the Tory objection, so that in 1866 Gladstone could accuse Parliament of foolishness and senselessness to withhold political power from the working classes, as since 1832, they had increasingly become fit for the exercise of it. Likewise the American founders held universal education to be a necessary defence of sensible government. The early frontier schools didn't teach much, but they taught as much as was needed to read the papers and consider the merits of an argument. The middle class, especially, was trained to read very deeply. Almost every independent household before the revolution had at least a Bible and either a work of history or law written by an Englishman.

This isn't the place to assess the reasons for the link between universal education and democracy, and the most basic reasons should be obvious to the educated person. What I want to consider, briefly, is the danger to democracy when universal literacy begins to decay, as it is doing today: when the system is in place, but repeated attempts to reform it fail; when a growing percentage of citizens no longer claim to be able to read and write; and when those who can make abominably poor use of it. Consider the rise of the paperback bestseller. An elderly fellow who works at the funeral home, a '63 graduate of Hillsdale, used to be an English highschool teacher. He told me today that when he gets Imprimis he immediately throws it into the trashcan, not because he thinks its rubbish (and there's something of an argument there), but because he just doesn't read that stuff. He went by the library today to pick up several volumes of mysteries to entertain himself during the hours he works here, and because recently, apparently, T.V. isn't so good. Many people I know and you know do the same thing.

Here is the problem, as an deductive argument.
Major premise: Democracy depends, and has always depended, among other things, on universal education.
Minor premise: Schools have always taught, and continue to teach, literacy.
Minor premise: Literacy used to stand for, but longer stands for, an education.
Conclusion: Our country is no longer a stable democracy.

"The glories of the past are destroyed, they are no longer understood, and language is forgotten. Letters, you have gone down in a cataract from depth of folly to further depth, from obscenity to obscenity, until you have reached the inane. For whom should any man now write? What ears remain to hear?"
Hilaire Belloc - The New Keepsake (1931)