A Letter to John Trumbull (June 6, 1756 – November 10, 1843)
Dear John,
In 1776, reading was power.
Not abstract power.
Not theoretical power.
Real power.
The ability to read meant access:
to scripture,
to contracts,
to laws,
to newspapers,
to pamphlets,
to ideas dangerous enough to start revolutions.
A literate person could navigate the world differently than an illiterate one.
Could sign documents.
Read prices.
Interpret political arguments.
Write letters.
Challenge authority.
Preserve memory.
And there you stood, John Trumbull:
artist,
historian,
observer of the Revolution,
living in one of the most unusually literate societies on Earth at the time.
Compared to Europe, the American colonies of the 1770s were astonishingly well-read among free white men.
In parts of New England, literacy rates among white males approached 90%.
That was extraordinary.
The Puritans helped shape this reality profoundly.
They believed reading the Bible personally mattered spiritually.
An illiterate population was vulnerable:
to ignorance,
to manipulation,
to Satan himself.
Which means colonial literacy partly emerged from theological paranoia.
Massachusetts passed early schooling laws requiring towns to establish schools.
Parents drilled children by candlelight.
Primers circulated endlessly.
Children memorized scripture, hymns, and moral lessons.
The famous New England Primer blended alphabet instruction with religious warnings so intensely that learning letters often felt spiritually high-stakes.
“A: In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”
Nothing says “welcome to kindergarten” quite like immediate original sin.
Regional differences mattered enormously though.
New England’s dense towns supported schools more easily.
The Mid-Atlantic colonies, influenced by Quaker traditions and immigrant diversity, also developed relatively strong literacy cultures.
But the Southern colonies lagged significantly because populations were more rural and dispersed.
Education often remained privilege of wealthy planter families.
And literacy in 1776 was deeply unequal racially and socially.
Enslaved Black Americans were frequently forbidden from learning to read at all.
Many colonies and later Southern states passed laws criminalizing literacy instruction for enslaved people because literacy threatened control.
A literate enslaved person could:
forge passes,
read abolitionist materials,
organize resistance,
claim intellectual autonomy.
Knowledge itself became dangerous.
And yet enslaved communities pursued literacy secretly anyway.
Through hidden lessons,
church instruction,
shared knowledge,
and extraordinary personal risk.
Because human beings consistently chase literacy even when power structures criminalize it.
Women’s literacy occupied complicated middle ground too.
White women’s literacy rates often ranged around 45–55%.
Many girls learned reading for religious and household purposes but were excluded from advanced classical education.
Boys learned:
reading,
writing,
ciphering,
Latin sometimes.
Girls were often taught:
reading,
domestic management,
moral instruction.
Apparently society trusted women with scripture…
but not algebra.
And importantly, literacy in 1776 did not necessarily mean polished writing ability.
Historians often measure literacy through signatures on legal documents.
Could someone sign their name?
That counted significantly.
Fluid composition skills varied enormously.
Still, America in 1776 was undeniably information-rich.
Pamphlets spread rapidly.
Newspapers circulated widely.
Broadsides plastered public spaces.
And then came Thomas Paine with Common Sense.
A literacy bomb dropped into colonial consciousness.
Hundreds of thousands read or heard it read aloud.
Because literacy also functioned communally.
One reader often became many listeners.
Taverns,
meeting houses,
public squares.
Ideas traveled through voices as much as pages.
The Revolution itself depended heavily upon literacy networks.
A republic of readers was forming.
Then came the 19th century.
And literacy democratized explosively.
The “Common School Movement” transformed education nationwide.
Reformers like Horace Mann championed publicly funded universal education.
By 1870, every state had established tax-supported elementary schools.
Education increasingly shifted from religious obligation toward civic necessity.
The republic needed informed citizens.
And industrial capitalism needed literate workers.
Factories,
railroads,
commerce,
bureaucracy.
Modern economies required reading increasingly.
The public high school emerged too.
Boston opened the first public high school in 1821.
By the late 1800s, secondary education expanded dramatically.
And literacy rates soared.
By 1900, white adult literacy reached into the mid-to-high 90% range nationally.
Meanwhile the gender gap narrowed substantially.
Women increasingly consumed novels, newspapers, magazines, and educational materials.
The 19th century exploded with reading culture:
serialized fiction,
sentimental novels,
almanacs,
political essays,
cheap newspapers.
America became print-saturated civilization.
People read constantly:
on trains,
by fireplaces,
in parlors,
during breaks.
The novel became mass entertainment long before television.
And libraries transformed access too.
Institutions like the Boston Public Library expanded free reading opportunities dramatically.
Reading rooms and circulating libraries democratized information for working-class Americans.
Still…
racial disparities remained severe.
In the antebellum South, enslaved people continued facing brutal restrictions on literacy.
After slave revolts like Nat Turner’s rebellion, Southern states intensified anti-literacy laws aggressively.
Teaching enslaved people to read became criminal offense.
Yet after the Civil War, formerly enslaved Black Americans pursued literacy with astonishing urgency.
Freedmen’s schools expanded rapidly.
Northern reformers assisted.
Black communities organized education themselves.
Black literacy rates surged from roughly 20% in 1870 to nearly 70% by 1910.
Because literacy symbolized liberation directly.
Frederick Douglass famously described learning to read as pathway from slavery toward freedom itself.
Words could unlock worlds.
Then came the 20th century.
And literacy became institutionalized.
Compulsory education laws expanded nationwide.
Child labor restrictions kept children in classrooms longer.
Progressive educators like John Dewey reimagined schooling itself.
Education shifted gradually from memorization toward critical thinking and democratic participation.
At least theoretically.
By mid-century, high school completion became increasingly normal.
The GI Bill expanded college access enormously after World War II.
Mass education became central pillar of American identity.
And literacy itself evolved.
No longer merely:
Can you read?
But:
Can you analyze?
Interpret?
Evaluate?
Function economically?
The military played major role too.
During World War II and Vietnam, armed forces taught literacy skills necessary for technical warfare.
Modern combat required manuals,
instructions,
navigation,
communication.
Even war increasingly depended upon reading comprehension.
Meanwhile teaching methods evolved dramatically.
The famous “Dick and Jane” readers popularized whole-word “look-say” instruction.
“See Spot run.”
Simple repetition.
Word recognition.
Context clues.
Later educators criticized these approaches for weakening deeper decoding and comprehension skills.
America spent decades arguing about phonics with almost theological intensity.
And television changed reading habits too.
Screens increasingly competed with books for attention.
Reading shifted from immersive necessity toward optional activity for many Americans.
Then computers arrived.
And literacy mutated again.
By the late 20th century, literacy increasingly meant navigating:
interfaces,
word processors,
digital systems,
technical manuals,
electronic communication.
The Information Age demanded multiple literacies simultaneously.
And now…
Chapter 2026.
Where literacy became battlefield of attention itself.
Today literacy means far more than reading words on paper.
A literate person now requires:
digital literacy,
media literacy,
information literacy,
algorithmic awareness,
critical evaluation skills.
Can you detect misinformation?
Recognize manipulated media?
Interpret graphs?
Evaluate sources?
Navigate search engines?
Spot AI-generated content?
Understand bias?
Modern literacy increasingly resembles cognitive self-defense.
And despite unprecedented access to information, foundational literacy struggles persist deeply.
Roughly 21% of American adults remain functionally illiterate, reading below fifth-grade level.
About 45 million adults struggle significantly with reading tasks necessary for modern life.
Meanwhile reading proficiency among children declined sharply post-pandemic.
National testing reveals major setbacks in comprehension and sustained reading ability.
And recreational reading continues falling steadily.
Gen Z often consumes enormous quantities of text…
yet in fragmented forms:
captions,
summaries,
comments,
feeds,
clips,
notifications.
People scan constantly.
But deep reading?
Sustained concentration?
Long-form engagement?
Increasingly endangered.
The average attention economy profits more from scrolling than contemplation.
Which creates strange paradox:
Humanity possesses more written information than ever before…
while many people struggle to sit quietly with a single difficult page.
And AI complicates everything further.
Students now use language models for summaries, essays, explanations, and research support.
Which raises profound questions:
Does assisted reading strengthen literacy?
Or weaken it?
Will AI expand access…
or erode comprehension?
Nobody fully knows yet.
Meanwhile misinformation ecosystems thrive online.
Conspiracy theories spread faster than corrections.
Deepfakes blur reality.
Algorithms feed confirmation bias aggressively.
Literacy in 2026 is no longer merely educational issue.
It is democratic survival issue.
Can citizens distinguish evidence from manipulation?
That question may define the century.
Still, resistance exists beautifully.
Teachers fight for reading instruction passionately.
Libraries remain community sanctuaries.
Book clubs flourish.
Independent bookstores survive stubbornly.
And millions still fall in love with stories every year despite every glowing distraction competing for attention.
John, if you could walk through America in 2026, you would likely stand stunned watching:
children carrying libraries inside phones,
audiobooks streaming instantly,
AI summarizing essays,
students researching through satellites orbiting Earth,
and adults arguing online using punctuation invented centuries before electricity.
You would marvel at abundance of words.
But We suspect you would also notice something fragile underneath all the information.
Attention itself became scarce.
And perhaps literacy ultimately depends not merely upon ability to decode language…
but willingness to slow down long enough to let ideas change you.
With ink-stained fingers, scrolling thumbs, library cards, and one exhausted English teacher somewhere begging students to please just read the actual chapter,
—The Radical Left 📖🖤
And dear reader, perhaps the deeper question after 250 years is this:
Are we reading to understand…
or merely reading to keep up?
Because literacy was never only about decoding symbols.
It was about entering larger conversation:
with history,
with philosophy,
with science,
with politics,
with one another.
A literate society is not merely one that can consume information quickly.
It is one capable of:
reflection,
discernment,
context,
skepticism,
and imagination.
And perhaps that is the danger of the modern attention economy.
When every screen competes to interrupt thought, deep reading begins to feel inefficient.
But democracy,
empathy,
critical thinking,
and wisdom have always required slowness.
After all, the human mind does not become thoughtful through endless scrolling.
It becomes thoughtful by wrestling with ideas long enough for understanding to take root.
And maybe literacy’s greatest purpose after 250 years remains beautifully unchanged:
not merely helping people read the world…
but helping them think beyond it.