I would like to comment on a much-valued human asset in our society: literacy. Since colonial times, literacy has been given great emphasis. In the early 1800's, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error", and, a century later, Thomas Mann saw education as a means of "elevating conditions of the poor" and "Americanizing the collection of varying cultures and religions." Today there is not a politician who fails to exploit the notion of the power of literacy, and the precious gift of reading. So, with such strong support over three centuries, why is the quality of our literacy relatively poor? Just HOW has reading been used over 300 years? How does it empower us?

According to historian Harvey Graff, author of Perspectives of Literacy (1988), reading in colonial schools meant scriptural study, with the specific aim of inculcating rigid values in a united citizenry. The New England primer was used for 150 years and sold 3,000,000 copies. It reminded students they were in need of salvation. Students read couplets such as, "In Adam's Fall/We sinned, all." The reasons for imparting reading skills were clearly NOT emancipation or creative empowerment of the reader.

In today's schools, there is also a catechism, a political one. Our country is the bastion of human rights, the lade of equal opportunity. The exercise of free inquiry through reading is subtly compromised by the demand for adherence to ideology and cultural conformity. This compromise is an effective silencer of opinions. Students learn about John D. Rockefeller, but not Mother Jones, about Teddy Roosevelt but not Eugene V. Debs. The context of education is political, and political agendas pervade students' lives from an early age and, too often, usurp their ability to be empowered, galvanized, vocalized by literacy. According to John Fiske in his book Reading the Popular (1989), "Knowledge is never neutral. It never exists in an empiricist, objective relationship to the real. Knowledge is power, the circulation of knowledge is part of the social distribution of power.

Actual empowerment through literacy, that is, gaining insights and understanding from reading, is really NOT what government seeks, as this would threaten the grip of corporate, social and religious status quo.

Thus, literacy programs, historically, have had a very different intent from the purported objectives. It hasn't really been the aim to create an informed, CONFIDENT, free, thinking populace, able to spot propaganda or commercial jargon, and thus avoid being prey to manipulation or exploitation, in other words, to read intelligently. Michael Apple, of the University of Wisconsin, argues in his book, Democratic Education in a Conservative Age (1993): "Our aim should be to create critical literacy, powerful literacy, political literacy which enables growth of genuine understanding and control of all the spheres of social life in which we participate."

I have some texts of letters published in Harper's Magazine, November, 2002, from U.S. citizens to J. Edgar Hoover. I feel they illustrate the failure to read with genuine understanding and control of these social spheres. The letters, dated 1955 to 1971, were found last year in Mr. Hoover's files, courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act. The finder was Ed Norris, publisher of a newsletter for Mad Magazine collectors, called The Mad Panic:

Dear Mr. Hoover,
I have read many issues of this Mad Magazine and I would like to pass my observations on to you. First of all, you will notice there are no advertisements and no photographs in the entire magazine. It costs millions of dollars to produce this kind of magazine and the single copy costs only .25 cents, which leads me to believe that someone is subsidizing the cost of this publication. Second, this magazine attacks every phase of our American way of life, such as churches, police departments, armed forces, television, radio, doctors, professional men, politics etc.etc. I feel this magazine is a diabolical form of Red propaganda used to infiltrate the minds of our teenagers and destroy our American way of life. A word used at the bottom of the first page by their own admission is a good way to describe what they are trying to do: "Satiric."

Dear Sirs,
During an Anti-Communist Study Course at Sylvania Heights School, the speaker named Mad Magazine as a Communist Front publication, giving as her authority a Naval Training Unit film she had seen. Please tell me whether it is true that the magazine is a front for Communists, subtly influencing our youth away from good American ideals; or whether it is just the satiric comedy it appears to be, panning the foibles of humanity wherever they're found. Our PTA wishes to take up the cudgel against Mad, and I want to be sure it's the right information I have.

(I see that writer didn't trust her common sense too far--but came dangerously close!)

The final letter is from a sixth grade class:

Dear Mr. Hoover,
It has been said that Mad Magazine is either Communist-controlled or has Communist articles. We would like your help in clearing up this rumor. If it is true, we shall take action against the sale of this magazine. If it is not true, we shall feel free to buy it. Could you please explain the truth to us?

--Heather Dorrell