| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon. Literacy in America: Historic Journey and Contemporary Solutions. Foreword by Gerald Gutek. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 2003. Pp. xxi, 329. $24.95.
Edward E. Gordon and Elaine H. Gordon investigated the history of education for literacy in the United States from the Pilgrims in Plymouth to the present day with a goal of finding exemplary practices that can be applied to contemporary needs. Their conclusion is that "home background and parental support are more powerful influences than schooling in determining personal literacy achievement" (p. 302).	1
The authors back up their conclusion with examples of successful efforts at literacy education from every era and many regions of the country. For the most part, their evidence is anecdotal, from diaries and letters, and their stated goal is not to measure the growth of literacy but to find out how it was accomplished. Some of their examples are well known: the importance of the ability to read the Bible in Puritan Massachusetts, the rise of sectarian education in the Dutch, Quaker, and Catholic communities in the middle colonies, family tutors on southern plantations, and one-room schoolhouses in rural America. For an example of community-directed schooling among American Indians, they chose the Cherokees, who developed their own written language. For African Americans they detail the efforts to learn to read of such well known individuals as Frederick Douglass.	. . .

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