Comment by pj_mukh

Of the 20% of US adults who don't have a level of literacy necessary to be considered "literate", 40+% are from other countries with low levels of literacy.

Wrong signal. The problem is demographic. Not being mean, just a fact that a lot of people are illiterate live in the US, but were not born and raised here.

Success itself could be to blame for the recent reversion.

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Something like that. They believed it was important that everyone was literate enough to read and understand the Bible themselves, without it being filtered through a historically corrupt Church that engaged in selective representation and interpretation of the Bible for their own manipulative purposes. Basically, they wanted everyone to be able to go to the source to determine what was and wasn’t moral and Christian, instead of relying on assertions by self-interested third parties.

Regardless of if they achieved their religious objectives, that earnest mission to make every human soul capable of reading the Bible for themselves produced the social good of a literate population capable of reading prodigious amounts of non-Bible content.

It is an interesting consequence of how the religious wars in Europe spilled over into in the early Americas.

I don't think that's particularly accurate for the US. Perhaps some of the Protestant settler communities were very literate, but I'm quite certain literacy would have been far lower by the time the country was actually founded, as slaves were imported and immigration from other communities picked up.

This seems like a suspiciously bold statement. Both in the assertion that these groups had achieved universal literacy, and in that other groups hadn't been at least as literate. Japan comes to mind, wrt the latter. Literacy, if not universal, was also widespread across the Muslim world.

It’s racist to break out statistics along what was literally the single most determinative factor for life outcomes in antebellum America?

Some were. Some would have made major advances whether they'd had a lot of formal schooling or not.

And many who had a lot of schooling learned to repeat, obey and sit still for 12-16 years.

And maybe had less initiative than they were born with. Maybe they learned to not question what they were told.

1. Thomas Edison Minimal formal education; mostly homeschooled by his mother. Edison was a voracious reader and learned through experimentation.

2. The Wright Brothers (Orville and Wilbur Wright) Neither completed high school. They learned through self-study, practical work, and their experiences running a bicycle repair shop.

3. Henry Ford Left school at 15 years old. Ford learned engineering and mechanics by working as an apprentice.

4. Michael Faraday Minimal formal schooling. Faraday worked as a bookbinder and educated himself through books and observation.

5. Benjamin Franklin Left school at age 10 due to financial constraints. Franklin was self-taught, primarily through reading and experimentation.

6. George Eastman Dropped out of school at age 14. Eastman learned accounting and photography on his own.

7. Elisha Otis Had little formal education and learned mechanics and engineering through work experience.

8. R. G. LeTourneau Dropped out of school in the sixth grade. He learned engineering through hands-on work and experimentation.

9. John D. Rockefeller Dropped out of high school to take a business course and learned through practical experience.

10. Philo Farnsworth Learned electronics and physics by reading and tinkering, despite being unable to afford college.

Most scientific advances throughout history prior to about the 1950s were made by people whose education was either informal or private (including apprenticeship). Private tutoring was the predominant mode of formal education (below university level) throughout history.

>I am pretty sure that it is a political goal not an economic one, this is obvious considering US black literacy levels took until 1979 to be comparable to whites.

I don't follow. 1979 would have been a high point in closing the black/white economic gap in America (partly because of the falling economic prospects of white Americans at the time).

This isn't the slam dunk you think it is. The article indicates that money isn't evenly distributed, which explains the conservatives goal with vouchers and charter / private schools.

My SO taught at all 3 kinds of the school in the US, in urban and suburban areas. The pay is bad everywhere, but worst at the non-union schools. Only teachers left have no better options or believe in the religion or cause of teaching, and even they tend to leave such schools the moment they have enough experience or better options. None of this is good for the kids at such schools.

The more affluent schools can afford to hire experts and keep them. I went to a rich(er) high school and had my choice among many specialty electives and advanced placement. My SO attended a highschool that was something between prison and daycare. My friend's private school was a religious indoctrination factory. Home schooled friends were often academical average to great, all socially awkward well into adulthood, and many were taught conspiracies or outright lies as long as it fit their parents "biblical worldview".

Public school was an escape from a cult-like community for me. I'm grateful my parents were too poor to force me into an alternative until I was old enough to refuse.

So the best you can hope for, if mass control is what you want, is the combination of comfortably and leisurely uneducated people, isn't it?

Establishing standards for education and defunding public schools to siphon the funds to churches are not the same thing. Conservatives have been attacking and defunding educational standards and attacking the educated and the concept of education - hence the repeated claims of "liberal bias", the artificial cultural war against university, etc.

And two sides at equal levels? Are you living in 1979? Local media is nearly all Sinclair. All the cable networks are owned by conservatives. Even traditionally liberal newspapers like the Washington Post are owned by rich assholes taking over the editorial board. And social media in the US is now dominated by two literal fascists.

At least where I’m from, the majority of homeschooled children are in conservative Christian (or Mormon) families, with a minority (but still notable) in super-left-wing hippy families. Very, very few in non-extreme families.