Literacy in the United States
-
Scott C. Flanagan
, Shinsaku Kohei and Ichiro Miyake
About this book
The United States is at a crucial moment in the history of literacy, a time when how well Americans read is the subject of newspaper headlines. In this insightful book, Carl F. Kaestle and his colleagues shed new light on this issue, providing a social history of literacy in America that broadens the definition of literacy and considers who was reading what, under what circumstances, and for what purposes.
The book explores diverse sources—from tests of reading ability, government surveys, and polls to nineteenth-century autobiographies and family budget studies—in order to assess trends in Americans’ reading abilities and reading habits. It investigates such topics as the relation of literacy to gender, race, ethnicity, and income; the magnitude, causes, and policy implications of the decline in test scores in the early 1970s; the reasons women’s magazines have been more successful than magazines for men; and whether print technology has fostered cultural diversity or consolidation. It concludes that there has been an immense expansion of literacy in America over the past century, against which the modest skill declines of the 1970s pale by comparison. There has also been tremendous growth in the availability, purchase, and use of printed materials. In recent decades, however, literacy has leveled and even declined in some areas of reading, as shown in the downward trends in purchases of newspapers and magazines. Since Americans are now being lured away from the print media by electronic media, say the authors, current worries about Americans’ literacy levels may well be justified.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Tables
xi -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Preface
xiii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Acknowledgments
xxi - I. Historians and Literacy
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. Studying the History of Literacy
3 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. The History of Readers
33 - II. Americans' Reading Abilities
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3 .Literacy and Reading Performance in the United States from 1880 to the Present
75 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4 .The Great Test-Score Decline: A Closer Look
129 - III. Americans' Reading Activities
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. Literacy as a Consumer Activity
149 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. Surveying American Readers
180 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7. Highbrow and Middlebrow Magazines in 1920
204 - IV. Literacy and Diversity in American History
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8. Autobiographies and the History of Reading: The Meaning of Literacy in Individual Lives
225 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9 .Gender, Advertising, and Mass-Circulation Magazines
245 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
10. Standardization and Diversity in American Print Culture, 1880 to the Present
272 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Appendix
295 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
299 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
About the Authors
333 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
335