The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure in the Nineteenth CenturyHarvey Graff's pioneering study presents a new and original interpretation of the place of literacy in nineteenth-century society and culture. Based upon an intensive comparative historical analysis, employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and on a wide range of sources, The Literacy Myth reevaluates the role typically assigned to literacy in historical scholarship, cultural understanding, economic development schemes, and social doctrines and ideologies. |
Contents
| 21 | |
LITERACY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN THE NINETEENTHCENTURY CITY | 49 |
Illiterates and Literates in Urban Society The MidNineteenth Century | 51 |
Persistence Mobility and Literacy | 117 |
The Children of the Illiterate Education Work and Mobility | 155 |
LITERACY AND SOCIETY | 193 |
Literacy Jobs and Industrialization | 195 |
Literacy and Criminality | 235 |
Literacy Quantity and Quality | 269 |
Sources for the Historical Study of Literacy in North America and Europe | 325 |
Literacy and the Census | 329 |
Classification of Occupations | 335 |
Illiterates Occupations 1861 | 337 |
A Note on the Record Linkage | 341 |
| 345 | |
Other editions - View all
The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure in the ... Harvey J. Graff No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
ability achievement adult American analysis Anglo-America ascriptive attendance Canadian census Charles Tilly context contributed convicted crime criminality culture decade Despite E. A. Wrigley E. P. Thompson economic Egerton Ryerson England English example experience factors Gareth Stedman Jones Hamilton literates heads of household hegemony homeownership illiter illiteracy important individuals industrial inequality influence instruction Irish Catholic Journal Katz Kingston labor learning less levels of literacy linked literacy myth literacy's London Mass migration modern moral bases moral economy nineteenth century nonmanual occupational Ontario oral parents patterns persistence poor popular population poverty Protestant rank rates reading and writing reformers relationship Report role Ryerson school promoters semiskilled significance skills social order social structure society status stratification study of literacy Table tion Toronto traditional Umeå University uneducated University of Toronto unskilled Upper Canada urban values wealth women workers York
Popular passages
Page 3 - A person is literate when he has acquired the essential knowledge and skills which enable him to engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his group and community and whose attainments in reading, writing and arithmetic make it possible for him to continue to use these skills towards his own and the community's development and for active participation in the life of his country.
Page 24 - But these grievances operated within a popular consensus as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices in marketing, milling, baking, etc. This in its turn was grounded upon a consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the community, which, taken together, can be said to constitute the moral economy of the poor.
Page 6 - Literacy writes that: the twentieth century inherited a mystique of literacy born out of ... two tendencies. One, essentially utilitarian, was committed to the functional uses of literacy as a medium for the spread of practical information that could lead to individual and social progress; the other, essentially aesthetic and spiritual, was committed to the uses of literacy for salvaging the drooping spirit of Western man from the death of religion and the ravages of progress (P- 3).
Page xxvi - ... a regular feature of the young's life course. Many persons, most prominently social and economic leaders and social reformers, grasped the uses of schooling and the vehicle of literacy for promoting the values, attitudes, and habits deemed essential to order, integration, cohesion, and certain forms of progress.
Page 3 - A person is literate who can with understanding both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life.
Page xxv - From the classical era forward, leaders of polities and churches, reformers as well as conservers, have recognized the uses of literacy and schooling. Often they have perceived unbridled, untempered literacy as potentially dangerous, a threat to social order, political integration, economic productivity, and patterns of authority.
References to this book
Identity Matters: Schooling the Student Body in Academic Discourse Donna LeCourt Limited preview - 2012 |
Accountability Frankenstein: Understanding and Taming the Monster Sherman Dorn No preview available - 2007 |