Our New Illiterate Class

Abstract

JLLITERACY, like economy and Americanism, is capable of variant definitions. General misusage of term has lent connotation of inability to read and write. Such is not proper meaning, however. Illiteracy should connote an unfamiliarity with basic and contemporary literature of language, a manifest want of current culture. It is under such a broad definition that we have today an entirely new type of illiteracy among us. Too frequently illiteracy has been confused with lack of formal schooling. Recently dean of an Eastern university challenged this dictum with accusation that eighty per cent of our college graduates are illiteratetotally unwilling to grasp, or incapable of grasping, great cultural and literary traditions of their time. He doubted that average alumnus would ever again read a serious, post-commencement book or cultural magazine. This thesis challenges conception that the educated are literate, and thereby questions our whole system of public education, even up to and through our great universities. To date no embattled educators have seized pen to disprove such a serious charge. There have been scattered and disgruntled complaints from that type of college professor-the scholar-who likes to hypnotize himself into believing that scholarship is not projected beyond campus wall; yet there seems to be a growing, common-sense opinion-justesse-even on college campus, that many a Latin major and many a Ph.D. in archaeology are illiterate in their own current cultural environments. Much of this unfortunate condition has come about because educators have generally held that education and scholarship are dependent upon our written literature. Nothing could be further from truth in America of I940. Prior to last decade and since invention of printing press, as Professor Lloyd James has so frequently and ably said, scholarship was dependent upon written word, and tremendous power of spoken word fell into disrespect and neglect. That mediumoral literature which for centuries carried burden of Homeric epic, of Platonic dialogue, and of Pan-Hellenic gospels of Isocrates, is no longer considered of scholarly stature. Rhetoric, debate, dialogue, and oral literature have in recent times all but disappeared. Pseudo