From that magazine and other books and magazines I figured Americans were the most literate in the mid to late 1800s.
Realizing that the influence for this must have come in the early to mid 1800s I began collecting more school books from that era.
The reason for the success appeared quickly.
I was taught to read in a one room school in Vermont before the effects of the invasion by the NY, NJ and CT trust fund hippies detroyed the state.
We were taught by an excellent, old rogue teacher who used the phonics she knew. This consisted of the single letter sounds, dipthongs and tripthongs (2 and three letters sounded together).
She (and I) believed there were a lot of words in english you couldn't read using phonics.
There were two sets of phonics rules that fell by the wayside and have been forgotten since the 1840s to 1850s. Those are the silent letter rules and the substitute letter rules.
By using these rules, our younger daughter, who wasn't infected by the public school system was reading at above second year college level at 3rd grade.
This isn't unusual as once you know the rules and have a 1930s or earlier dictionary, you can read anything.
I've had many discussions with so called teachers who use this ridiculous "whole word" program to "teach" reading.
Except for the few rogue teachers, this is a waste of time.
Most are so completely indoctrinated with the propaganda from the colleges that there is no way they will even consider listening to anything a lay person has to say.
There are two books, by Rudolf Flesch, "Why Johnny Can't Read - and what You Can Do About It" in 1955, and "Why Johnny STILL Can't Read" in 1981 that document and explain the sordid money trail that keeps the farce of the whole word program going.
The Whole Word system has kids memorizing 20,000 words like Chinese characters. They are taught to guess at words they don't know by the surrounding context.
Few people are going to remember 20,000 of anything they try to memorize.
When these crippled students hit math, history and science, there are many words not included in the 20,000.
The ignorant reading teachers scoff at phonics as "rote learning". They just look at you like a deer in the headlights when you ask them, well, which would you rather memorize, 20,000 of ANYTHING or 120? There are roughly 120 phonics rules which enable you to read almost ANY word in the English language.
An older dictionary allows you to comprehend it.
I have the complete set of rules in "cheat sheet" form to print out.
Who wants to bother memorizing even 120 of anything?
You begin to remember the most used rules as you use them. When you hit a word with a seldom used rule, that's why you have a cheat sheet!
Eventually you pretty much forget you are using the rules, it's just automatic.
The speedy "sight reading" just comes naturally as time goes on.
Many people learn enough phonics from different sources such as Montessori, reading the Bible (an older copy), re-incarnation from a soul that was alive in the 1800s or just figure it out on their own. The rest are out of luck.
The inability to read unknown words is what causes many people to have to go to classes to learn just about anything new.
They are unable to read the information they need to figure out things for themselves.
This was particularly obvious when computers were being introduced to our school system.
Almost all the teachers were saying they needed classes on how to operate and use computers.
Several of us asked why they didn't just read the manuals and figure it out like we did?
The response was that they couldn't learn that way. Translation, they were unable to read and comprehend the manuals because there were many words they couldn't read.
If enough folks bypass this mess by homeschooling and properly teaching reading, our country may survive.
If not, watch the movie, "Idiocracy". Don't rent it, buy it, you're going to want to watch it several times to catch all the nuances and to show to others.
I was taught to read in a one room school in Vermont before the effects of the invasion by the NY, NJ and CT trust fund hippies detroyed the state.
Everyone in my family, my parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, we all had learned to read before entering school. Before preschool, really.
I mean, you start sitting with a child, reading stories, as soon as they're out of the crib. You start reading along with them as soon as they can hold a book.
I'd like to hold a strong opinion on reading pedagogy in the schools, but in truth I don't think it makes much difference. Depending upon the schools for education is a mistake.
>>An older dictionary allows you to comprehend it.
I have an unabridged dictionary from c. 1980. Someone will have to deal with it after I die, I’m keeping it until then.