Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Well, one of my "problems" is that when I used to work for schools, I did 
grant planning.  Part of that process is showing why you need x, y or z 
dollars.  I have, in hard copy, the decade stats beginning in 1950.  I can't 
give you a link for them, well, cause my storage shed isn't a website <g>

However, if you really, really want them, I could probably browse the web 
and find the numbers.  Now, the numbers can't of jump around because 
compulsory education has changed and the ages have changed and the grades 
have changed, so when you do the stats, you have to correlate the *actual* 
ages to actual ages instead of "graduates" since not all that long ago, 
graduating was 8th grade.  Going beyond 8th grade was not the norm. 
However, those pesky ol' servicemen came home and they needed jobs more than 
kids who had just graduated from public school.  Thus you have the extended 
from K-8 to K-12 in most states.

That being only by way of a partial explanation, the bottomline is that 
folks who graduated in the 1950s are more literate than kids graduating now. 
And the over populace is not as literate as the populace 100 or more years 
ago.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>
> I think that's an assertion without evidence. I have read letters that
> my ancestors wrote. I gotta say that most of the old folk were pretty
> literate. However, the letters from neighbors and employees are barely
> decipherable. All the illiterates, save one, that I know personally
> were pre1950s models.
>
> I'd like a little more hard evidence that literacy used to be more 
> widespread.