ABSTRACT
Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now … if you teach that nigger … how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unt him to be a slave.
—Frederick Douglass, Narrative (1845)
Mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. A hundred years ago people didn’t need to be good readers in order to earn a living. But in the Information Age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material.
