Don't Read

Abstract

In his two-volume treatise Educational Problems, G. Stanley Hall—president of Clark University, former president of the American Psychological Association, leader of the child study movement, and one of the most influential educational theorists of his time—offers an extended and rousing defense of illiteracy. "Very many men have lived and died and been great, even the leaders of their age, without any acquaintance with letters," he writes. For Hall, an evolutionary psychologist, illiteracy is acceptable (may even be desirable!) because by not reading humans manage to avoid a whole range of physical injuries. They therefore help to ensure the well-being of the community at large. The "near work" literates perform, he explains, "is the chief cause of the alarming development of myopia with all the evils of excitement, choroid strain, squinting, and stooping, and the resulting congestion that follow in its train." Since these ailments are inheritable, in Hall's account, they might one day affect the species as a whole. "The men and women of coming generations ought not to be saddled with an inheritance of short-sightedness," he offers. "[The eye] was made to look far and near, up and down, right and left . . . so that to zigzag monotonously over the printed page puts a great strain upon it."1