What happened to the fight against adult illiteracy? People talked a lot about it last fall; now there are just a few public service announcements. Illiteracy still remains, of course, despite the lack of hoopla and federal reports. Jonathan Kozol, in Illiterate America, states that while the largest numbers of illiterate adults are white, native-born Americans, as a percent of population, the figures are higher for blacks and Hispanics: 44% of black and 56% of Hispanic adults are illiterate (as opposed to 16% for whites). 47% of black seventeen-year olds are illiterate. These numbers have increased over the past two decades, and will probably increase until the end of this century. Why has this happened, and why will it continue to happen? People have authored reasons ranging from the permissiveness of the 60s to genetic inferiority, but none of these analyses approaches the real answer: Illiteracy is, for all intents and purposes, a "policy" of the capitalist society in which we live. In other words, the creation and maintenance of illiteracy in America is an intention, rather than a failure, of the capitalist system that shapes our lives.
At first this may sound crazy, a kind of Lyndon Laroucheian conspiracy. But one has to first understand the nature of the system that dominates our lives. Robert Heilbroner, in his book The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, states two characteristics that drive the capitalist system: its restless search for profit, and the powerful discipline and domination that that search for profit requires. Given that, what role would an educational system play in a capitalist society? To do as it has always done: make sure that the status quo -- the search for profit -- remains intact. For at least a hundred years that status quo has required a large pool of subservient, punctual workers for marginal or dead-end jobs, a pool large enough to keep wages down. Who better than minorities to fill this bill? They are ready- made, power less and usually despised by the rest of the society. The less time they stay in school, the more available they are to hang around and wait for whatever scraps come along. And they won't stay in school if the schools get them nowhere. Illiteracy was good for the economy.
That's all changing now, of course, in the "information age"; literacy will now be good for profit. But we mustn't forget that for a long time, and at great cost to those who could least afford to pay, illiteracy was an intention of the system, not a failure. The usual school reforms won't work (as they haven't worked in the past) unless we take a harsh look at what our desire for profit does to certain people in this society.
What Does "Rural" Mean?
The Official Language