But their educational equipment was even
more limited than the grade they attended would indicate. Of the
children applying to go to work 1,803 had not advanced further than the
first grade even when they had gone to school at all; 3,379 could not
even sign their own names legibly, and nearly 2,000 of them could not
write at all. The report brings automatically into view the vicious
circle of child-labor, illiteracy, bodily and mental defect, poverty and
delinquency. And like all reports on child labor, the large family and
reckless breeding looms large in the background as one of the chief
factors in the problem.
Despite all our boasting of the American public school, of the equal
opportunity afforded to every child in America, we have the shortest
school-term, and the shortest school-day of any of the civilized
countries. In the United States of America, there are 106 illiterates to
every thousand people. In England there are 58 per thousand, Sweden and
Norway have one per thousand.
The United States is the most illiterate country in the world--that is,
of the so-called civilized countries. Of the 5,000,000 illiterates
in the United States, 58 per cent. are white and 28 per cent. native
whites. Illiteracy not only is the index of inequality of opportunity.
It speaks as well a lack of consideration for the children. It means
either that children have been forced out of school to go to work, or
that they are mentally and physically defective.
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