The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [172]
But Auld had revealed to Bailey the great secret: ‘I now understood ... the white man’s power to enslave the black man. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.’
Without further help from the now reticent and intimidated Sophia Auld, Frederick found ways to continue learning how to read, including buttonholing white schoolchildren on the streets. Then he began teaching his fellow slaves: ‘Their minds had been starved... They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul.’
With his knowledge of reading playing a key role in his escape, Bailey fled to New England, where slavery was illegal and black people were free. He changed his name to Frederick Douglass (after a character in Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake), eluded the bounty hunters who tracked down escaped slaves, and became one of the greatest orators, writers and political leaders in American history. All his life, he understood that literacy had been the way out.
For 99 per cent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made. Except for first-hand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the game of ‘Chinese Whispers’, over tens and hundreds of generations, information would slowly be distorted and lost.
Books changed all that. Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate - with the best teachers - the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
By some standards, African-Americans have made enormous strides in literacy since Emancipation. In 1860, it is estimated, only about five per cent of African-Americans could read and write. By 1890, 39 per cent were judged literate by the US census; and by 1969, 96 per cent. Between 1940 and 1992, the fraction of African-Americans who had completed high school soared from seven per cent to 82 per cent. But fair questions can be asked about the quality of that education, and the standards of literacy tested. These questions apply to every ethnic group.
A national survey done for the US Department of Education paints a picture of a country with more than 40 million barely literate adults. Other estimates are much worse. The literacy of young adults has slipped dramatically in the last decade. Only three to four per cent of the population scores at the highest of five reading levels (essentially everybody in this group has gone to college). The vast majority have no idea how bad their reading is.
Only four per cent of those at the highest reading level are in poverty, but 43 per cent of those at the lowest reading level are. Although it’s not the only factor, of course, in general the better you read, the more you make - an average of about $12,000 a year at the lowest of these reading levels, and about $34,000 a year at the highest. It looks to be a necessary if not a sufficient condition for making money. And you’re much more likely to be in prison if you’re illiterate or barely literate. (In evaluating these facts, we must be careful not to improperly deduce causation from correlation.)
Also, marginally literate poorer people tend not to understand ballot initiatives that might help them and their children, and in stunningly disproportionate numbers fail to vote at all. This works to undermine democracy at its roots.
If Frederick Douglass as an enslaved child could teach himself into literacy and greatness, why should anyone in our more enlightened day and age remain