According to that article you linked, the method in which they were using puts the 1979 literacy rate at 0.6%. "The more recent focus on illiteracy has centere

According to that article you linked, the method in which they were using puts the 1979 literacy rate at 0.6%. "The more recent focus on illiteracy has centered on functional literacy, which addresses the issue of whether a person's educational level is sufficient to function in a modern society. The earlier surveys of illiteracy examined a very fundamental level of reading and writing. The percent of illiteracy, according to earlier measurement methods, was less than 1 percent of persons 14 years old and over in 1979." I don't know where that 99% figure that John Gatto Taylor came from. He did talk about a significantly lower literacy rate in the 1970s. I think if one were to use functional literacy as the metric, there would still be a similar decrease literacy rate. And no, Taylor was not trying to paint the past with rose-colored glasses. Whether or not the farming society did a good enough job as citizens, the frame in which education was viewed was much different. The things from the past is not necessarily better, but neither are the way we are doing things right now.