Thoughts while shaving: Consider this: The Northwest Ordinance, establishing public school system in 1787, initially introduced the Bible as it's only textbook, producing the most literate nation the world has known. Literacy rate in 1890's America? 98%! The late Paul Harvey often repeated following his newscast how a 1955 graduating class of Harvard was intimidated, refusing to take a basic literacy exam given to 8th graders in 1908. Today, the Bible is prohibited in public schools! Post-Christian, post-Constitutional America is on a fast~track to oblivion from the gates of hell! Even so! Come Lord Jesus! Period! End Report!
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"Literacy rate in 1890's America? 98%!"
"By 1900, 34 states had compulsory schooling laws, 4 of which were in the South. 30 states with compulsory schooling laws required attendance until age 14 (or higher).[57] As a result, by 1910, 72 percent of American children attended school. Half the nation's children attended one-room schools. In 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school.[58]"
I've seen that 8th grade literacy test and it covers much more than basic literacy. It's generally dismissed as a fraud and I'm sure Harvard grads recognized that. In any event, the current US literacy rate is 99%; worldwide, the rate is 84%, including many countries where the Bible is forbidden.
Maybe you're confusing it with the 1908 literacy test for immigrants. Most adults in the US can't pass the current test for immigrants, either.
Notice that 1787 was the date the Constitution was ratified, before the Bill of Rights? The First Amendment came around two years later barring establishment of religion.
Our literacy rate is at 99% today without using the bible as a textbook, so it would appear that modern textbooks are better. Besides, do you want people to speak in modern American English or King James style old English?
I have some nineteenth century elementary school English textbooks, and it's true that the vocabulary puts the average modern adult literacy level to shame. However, the rest is bullshit. Even if it weren't, so what? The meaning of the words written in whatever's being used as a textbook is not what teaches a language.
Citation needed.
The Bible is not prohibited in public schools, surely? It's just not allowed to be used as valid history or science source, but only as reference material in Religion classes. Many atheists recognize that allowing people to actually study and analyze the Bible is one of the surest ways to create more atheists.
"Thoughts while shaving: Consider this: The Northwest Ordinance, establishing public school system in 1787"
That's always the first thing that jumps into my mind when I'm shaving.
Our literacy rate is currently rated at 50th in the world.
Also, how could we have had 98% literacy when it was illegal to even teach certain portions of the population how to read?
Actually the literacy rate was closer to ~86%, while in 1955 it was ~98%
You have your dates backwards. Also, the typical 1890 textbook read like this and I quote
"I never saw such children," said the old hen. "You don't try at all." (McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader)
This was for 6ths graders. For comparison, but the time modern grade-schoolers hit 6th grade, they'll have read such novels as:
The Diary of Anne Frank
They probably won't make the mistake of thinking that "Even so!" (some idiot from WND) is a complete sentence. Nor will they use 2 semicolons in the same sentence "Thoughts while shaving: Consider this:" (same idiot).
The problem with virtually all of those test examples from the past is that they all contain recently studied material.
If you just spent time studying a particular subject matter then a test on that subject matter will be much easier than that same test twenty or thirty years later.
I doubt I could pass many of the tests I got As on in college 45 years ago.
"Twenty one to 23 percent of American adults ... demonstrated skills in the lowest level in prose, document and quantitative proficiencies."
National Center for Education Statistics -2002
Yeah, that would have nothing to do with the massive rise in global literacy in the 19th century, right? All because of the Bible and God, of course.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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