Reading Knowledge

Abstract

Concerns about declining competence in elementary education are hardly new. In 1385 John of trevisa complained that new teaching methods were disadvantaging children “in alle þe gramere scoles of Engelond” (“in all the grammar schools of England”) since they once learned Latin and French but now “conneb na more Frensche ban can hir lift heele” (“know no more French than does their left heel” [Higden 2:161]). This concern was clearly widespread because William Langland also complains, at roughly the same time, that “naught oon among an hundred” (“not one among a hundred”) can read “a lettre” (“a letter”) of French (15.371-75). According to Langland, not only did schools no longer produce well-educated adults (“noon… kan versifie fair ne formaliche enditen” [“none can versify well nor write according to the rules” (15.372-73)]), but they were failing in even the most basic literacy training (grammar itself, he said, now “bigileth [perplexes] all children” [15.371]). The decline was so real—or the panic so great— that it seemed Johnny already couldn't read in 1357 (schoolchildren chanted basic prayers in Latin “without knowing how to construe or understand them” [“absque eo … construere sciant vel intellegere”], and “when they are grown up they do not understand what they… read every day” [“in etate adulta, cotidiana que … legunt non intelligant” (Leach 316-17; see also Zieman 73)]).