Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Daniel McDermott
FYC 13100
October 14 2010
In the United States today one of our most precious possessions is the freedom to
participate in our own government, a political system we call democracy. Around the
world there are many other countries that have the same political system, and in most
countries they find this freedom just as sacred and important as Americans do. On the
Many scholars have asked over the years where this idea of democracy came from, and
why it is so popular around the world. While there are many reasons that have been
proposed by various academics, the reason that has had the most impact on the
fact and promote literacy in our own country, as well as other countries, to help promote
democracy itself.
The first democracies were created in ancient Greece around 800 BCE. These
strongly independent city-states, or poleis had just developed their own alphabet and
writing system after having lost their previous writing system centuries ago (Hollister
85). More and more Greek citizens started to learn how to read, and soon a literate,
educated class outside the aristocracy began to arise (Hollister 81). In the polis of
Athens, especially, this new tier of society began to demand more rights, and eventually
Many argue that it was the fact that in Greece the middle class fought the wars,
not the aristocracy, that led to the democracies in ancient Greece. This may have been a
factor, but was not the leading cause. This becomes evident when one looks at the similar
setup in ancient Rome where the exact opposite happened. In ancient Rome the people
who fought the wars were also part of the middle classes (Hollister 189). Instead of this
leading to a democracy in Rome, the armies, made up of the middle and lower classes,
proclaimed their general, Julius Caesar, emperor and destroyed Rome’s aristocracy
(Hollister 191). In two fairly alike situations two different outcomes happened. This
affirms that you cannot prove anything from the fact that the middle classes were also the
warrior class.
Unfortunately democracy fell out of popularity for almost 2000 years after the
Ancient Greeks. It was reintroduced during the Renaissance in Europe through the
spread of mass literacy. Mass literacy, similar to democracy, is a trend that is fairly new
in the spectrum of the human experience. Reading and writing use to be a special skill
that only a small minority in any community had. Literacy was limited in this way
because of the limited number of schools, and the work and effort needed to write an
entire book by hand. Mass literacy started to take hold in Europe after the invention of
the printing press, which was invented in 1440 in Germany. With the invention of the
printing press, the work needed to make large quantities of books was exponentially
decreased. For the first time in history the middle class, and even the poor could afford to
own books. Literacy began to spread like wildfire. Soon the lower classes could read the
Bible and some even read the classics. This created a culture that questioned the status
quo, and many started to dispute the divine mandate of the ruling class in Europe.
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The first reemergence of self-government on a large scale was the United States,
which at the time was called the Thirteen Colonies. Our forefathers rebelled from
England in 1775. At this point in history the printing press had been around for a few
hundred years and the majority of white males knew how to read (Gallagher). From the
Boston Massacre to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the patriots used the fact that the
majority of recruitable colonists, white males, knew how to read to spread anti-British
propaganda. This led to the colonists and patriots “to stand, to persevere, to have
fortitude, and to fight” (Gallagher). All these brave men fought for the freedom of our
country, which we are still enjoying today. It is quite probable that if propaganda had not
existed to persuade the colonists to fight, we would still be ruled by England and a
Many academics today agree that literacy and education was the path that led to
democracy. There are some, however, that site Socialism and Communism as proof that
literacy does not always lead to democracy. It is a known fact that university educated
men like Stalin and Lenin implemented this freedom crushing system of government and
that many other educated Russians went along with it for decades. They misused mass
While the USSR did became one of the most powerful countries in the world with
an educated, yet controlled populous, this was a small fluke in history that was relatively
Communist ruled satellites, even though they had been fed procommunist propaganda for
years, in the first free election the people called for an end to the Communist Party’s
control of the government (Darden). This proves that even in a country where the people
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have been brainwashed for generations, if they are literate and educated they will vote to
While literacy affects the creation of democracies, it also helps to strengthen them
and helps to get people involved in them. From the start of democracy in the United
States our leaders understood this fact. Thomas Jefferson implemented a public
education program that put white males through three years of free education (Cherland
256). At this time in history this program was revolutionary and helped to keep our
newly formed democracy alive. Over time public schooling became more and more
integrated into our society, until today where we have all children, not just white males,
going to school for at least 12 years. Unfortunately, academically, our country has been
As Camila Alire states in her article “Advocacy: Part II”, we are falling behind in
our basic literary skills or BLS. Other countries, in Asia especially, are catching up to our
falling standards and even passing them. Alire states “A literate nation is the foundation
of our democracy.” The problem is the line of proficiency is constantly moving as our
society develops. The literacy levels that were acceptable 100 years ago are not
acceptable now. New technologies, such as the internet, have created a boom of available
information to the average American, and this has changed what we expect from an
average citizen. Most people expect that the average citizen be relatively up to date on
current events and the politics of the day, which requires a level of literacy proficiency
that has not been required in the past. As our education system fails in teaching and
educating our citizenry the basic literary skills they need to be able to process all this
information our democracy becomes weaker and weaker. In the last 25 years the United
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States has fallen from the first to the fourteenth in higher education rankings (Hill).
While there are many different suggestions about how to fix the problem, the one thing
Margret Hill proposes refocusing schools to teach our children about our
government, history, and current events in her article “Strong Schools for a Strong
Democracy”. The fact is students can be excellent readers and be able to tackle very
challenging books, but if they are not understanding the context of what they are reading,
usually much of the meaning is lost. Our democracy has lasted for a record breaking 230
years, and if we want to continue to exist as a democracy we must make sure our children
can comprehend the events going on around them and have a certain amount of civic
pride for the country they call home. As Hill explains, “schools have not implemented
the types of practices that foster civic participation.” This needs to be changed, and
Camila Alire proposes a different, but equally viable idea. Alire argues,
“Libraries play a vital role in making our nation literate.” More libraries need to be
created and existing ones need to be maintained, she asserts. Alire also states that good
literacy rates help maintain democratic ideals such as freedom of speech, expression, and
press. While this is a good point the best part about this plan is that it covers all age
groups. Only children and teenagers participate in school, however, anyone is welcome
to the library to check out books, thus widen their understanding of the world and
educating themselves. I think that this is also a good idea, and that a combined effort
including changing the teaching policies in schools and putting a bigger emphasis on
libraries would be an excellent first step to getting our country back on track
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If policy makers do implement these changes they need to put into consideration
where they will start implementing these changes. Both Hill and Alire made very clear
that education is not racially even in our country. Alire stated that while 15 percent of
Americans are below the basic literacy skills, 44 percent of Latinos fall below the line
and 24 percent of African Americans fall below the level. For many Latinos this could be
a language barrier, but this is still unacceptable considering the official language of the
United States is English. All of our country’s government work and business is done in
English. This means change needs to be concentrated on areas with large minority
populations, especially in large cities, which are known to have large populations of
minorities.
Upholding democracy in our own country through literacy is very important, but
One area that we have tried, to limited success, to introduce democracy is Africa. Many
countries in Africa at least claim that they are ruled by a democracy, but unfortunately the
educated few take advantage of the mostly illiterate and uneducated masses in these
countries.
One country that has been struggling for decades with this problem is Uganda.
The Ugandan government’s official language is English, but the majority of the people in
Uganda still speak their tribal languages with English as a second language, and can only
read and write English at an elementary level (Manyak 11-12). This creates a divide
among the well educated politicians and the undereducated poor. While there is enough
educated Ugandans to govern the central government, the local government is usually in
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the hands of a hardly literate local who does not understand how government works
(Manyak 11). Because they do not understand how government works and usually can
barely read they are very easy to manipulate. Since they do not fully understand the laws
under which they operate and quickly get fed up with the establishment they often fall
into corruption, skimming money from their district’s allowance, and in general breaking
political elites, and not enough understanding for the average citizen to successfully
democracy becomes corrupt and usually falls apart. It can be argued that the only thing
keeping most of these African democracies running is the billions of dollars of aid being
pumped into them from the United States and other countries. While this keeps the
democracies alive, something else needs to be done to make them well run democratic
machines that can stand on their own. This something is education. These countries need
to have the majority of their population educated and literate enough to make good
choices in leaders and to keep track of those leaders when they are elected. If enough
schools and other infrastructure created to educate people could be put into place over the
next few decades, we could soon have a democratic Africa that could stand on its own.
The pursuit of efficient and lasting democracy in the United States and around the
world should be one of the major policies of our country. The best way to promote
democracy is to promote literacy and education through the creation of schools and
libraries. Policymakers in our country need to accept this and do whatever they can to
Works Cited
Alire, Camila. “Advocacy: Part II” American Libraries. November 2009. Web.
Hill, Margret. “Strong Schools for a Strong Democracy” Leadership 38. November-
Darden, Keith and Grzymala-Busse, Anna. “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism, and
Gallagher, Edward J. “Thomas Paine’s CRISIS 1 and the Comfort of Time” The
Hollister, C Warren and Rogers, Guy Maclean. Roots of the Western Tradition: A Short
History of the Ancient World. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 2008.
Print.