People seem to think that there is less literacy than there used to be, but that is just not true--

In the middle ninteenth century, only about 10-15% of American children received a formal education--Most people had no need of it--It was common for one member of a family who had learned to read to read aloud to the others, and it was also common for a person to ask someone who was literate to write and read letters when it was needed.

Even in the early part of this century, you could be a medical doctor with only two years of college, and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who prosecuted the Nuremburg Trials, only had a single year of law school.

Today, even most minimum wage jobs require some degree of literacy, and many skilled laborers must use automated and computerized machines in their work. The people in these economic classes never needed good reading skills to survive in the workplace, and suddenly, they do--and suddenly, our education system needs to deliver universal literacy--something no educational system has ever been called on to do--until it does, bad spelling will be the least of our problems--

The problem is that even the simple jobs today require high levels of literacy--