3 ms·

US chattel slaves were forbidden by law to read because it made organizing/rebelling easier and more likely. There were a few exceptions for certain tasks (boo

by gumby 3y ago

US chattel slaves were forbidden by law to read because it made organizing/rebelling easier and more likely. There were a few exceptions for certain tasks (bookkeeping and the like). Of course punishment for literacy was exacted upon the slave, not the person who taught them. It was not uncommon for Egyptian and Roman slaves (at least) to be literate (whether before enslavement or taught as slaves). For example, Greek tutors were in high demand. It's hard to estimate what the literacy rate was; certainly it must have been much lower than in modern OECD countries. In Rome, unlike, say, Sparta, there were no schools; teaching was all done in the home, so if you were a plebian it's less likely you could read. OTOH the roman soldiers typically could read. And most of the surviving graffiti in Pompeii doesn't look aristocratic. I think Rome probably had a literacy rate on par with contemporary Greece and Egypt; higher than contemporary China's and probably comparable to India a millennium earlier (inferred from the prevalence of public proclamations (e.g. Ashoka steele), compared to the more "aristocratic boasting" of Roman and ancient Egyptian monumental writing aimed more at fellow elite.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
> In Rome, ... teaching was all done in the home Really?? I am very surprised to hear that, I never thought there could be any other way but having schools in a structured and developed society like theirs. > OTOH the roman soldiers typically could read Not to disbelieve but can you back that up? I thought the bulk of the Roman military was from pretty low down in society and literacy is usually low to negligible there
- jan_Inkepa 3y ago
  > Really?? I am very surprised to hear that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_(ancient_Rome) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_(ancient_Rome) There were schools...
  - gumby 3y ago
    IIRC that was a later development after the 3rd century C.E., well after the eruption of Vesuvius
    - qwytw 3y ago
      As far as we know the Romans used a similar system to the Greeks, there were usually no physical school buildings but parents did/could pool money together to hire a teacher who would teach in various public spaces etc. There are plenty of sources, anecdotes etc. describing this hundreds of years prior the the 3rd century C.E. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurius_Carvilius_Ruga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurius_Carvilius_Ruga is first person that we know of who established an actual school in Rome (and it's unlikely that there weren't any schools before that). He lived in the 3rd century B.C. (not C.E./A.D.)
    - jan_Inkepa 3y ago
      I did a quick look to search to see - I mean if anywhere has retained evidence of schools it should be Pompeii - I did a cursory search through Bloomer's book 'The School of Rome', and here are some bits from it: "The physical requirements for a grammar school were minimal: school, like any small ancient business, could be held on the street, under or above a portico, near an important public building such as a temple, or at a rented shop. A wall painting from Pompeii, now lost, showed school near a portico and decidedly amid the bustle of the city. School could be held “in private,” at the teacher’s home or the house of the patron." "Graffiti indicate schooling took place at several locations in Pompeii and at Rome. The places of instruction are unremarkable shop stalls. Two exceptions to these modest locales merit attention, since they seem to have dedicated space and indicate an education that is decidedly not modest. The emperor’s palace had a slave-training complex known as the paidagogia , and the villas of the wealthy had as part of their design semicircular recesses, or exedrae. The latter, like private libraries, are places of culture, perhaps of poetry reading or rhetorical training." (It links to footnotes which reference an Italian paper apparently saying there are disputes as to how to recognise schools as such). Anyway, yeah, very good point!
- gumby 3y ago
  > Really?? I am very surprised to hear that, I never thought there could be any other way but having schools in a structured and developed society like theirs. Schools as we think of them today are a pretty recent invention. Even the Academies and Gymnasium of Athens were generally for adults. There was an exception in Sparta, where education was part of the facist indoctrination, similar to the system in the DDR or USSR. Then again, Sparta was super weird even by Greek standards (which was a society whose closest modern analog might be Da'esh (AKA ISIS). The hard part of reading ancient Greek for me was not the grammar but the sheer bizarreness of their structural assumptions, which are rarely visible in translation. > > OTOH the roman soldiers typically could read > Not to disbelieve but can you back that up? I thought the bulk of the Roman military was from pretty low down in society and literacy is usually low to negligible there That's the point: it's a confounding point to my assumption of low levels of literacy among the plebians. You can do your own web search on this topic, but you might want to start with this paper: https://www.academia.edu/37000249/Soldiers_and_Documents_Insights_from_Nubia_The_Significance_of_Written_Documents_in_Roman_Soldiers_Everyday_Lives https://www.academia.edu/37000249/Soldiers_and_Documents_Ins... From its abstract: "The Roman army as an institution and the Roman soldier as an individual could not have functioned without the written word. A few newly published finds from Primis / Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia as well as a number of other documents discussed in this paper illustrate the extent to which administrative paperwork and the soldiers’ (semi-)private correspondence contributed to the army’s functioning and governed the soldiers’ everyday lives already in the first decades of the new imperial army. Other evidence shows how the formal and symbolic qualities of imperial and official texts, and administrative documents served Roman soldiers from all types of units in their private documents and monuments as a means to demonstrate military identity"
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > There was an exception in Sparta, where education was part of the facist indoctrination, similar to the system in the DDR or USSR That's an interesting description considering those schools were only accessible to the elite rather than the general population. > which was a society whose closest modern analog might be Da'esh (AKA ISIS) Rather a random thing to say? I don't see that many similarities. For one thing (upper class) women in Sparta (or Rome for that matter) had considerably more rights than in Athens for instance (which was probably even worse than modern Saudi Arabia in that regard). > literacy among the plebians. Most of the Roman upper class was plebian.
qwytw 3y ago
> In Rome, unlike, say, Sparta, there were no schools; teaching was all done in the home, I'm not sure that's true. Also when people think about Sparta they usually only consider about the upper class elite since almost the entire population of the region were second class freemen with limited civil rights or slaves/serf. In any case the Spartan Agoge (which again was only accessible to a small proportion of the population) wasn't necessarily similar to what we understand a 'school'. As far as we know Roman 'educational system' was similar to that which existed in normal Greek cities (so not Sparta). Upper classes hired private tutors/bough slaves, however there were public (privately funded) schools called 'Ludus' accessible to a significant proportion of the the population. > probably comparable to India a millennium earlier (inferred from the prevalence of public proclamations (e.g. Ashoka steele), Why do you think that was the case? Also didn't Ashoka live in the 3rd century BC (so contemporary to the Hellenistic age)? > monumental writing aimed more at fellow elite. I'm not sure that was generally the case in Ancient Rome or most Greek cities. Many of the public inscriptions were clearly aimed at the general population.
dagaci 3y ago
Why is this downvoted?
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
>US chattel slaves were forbidden by law to read because it made organizing/rebelling easier and more likely That's not the reason why. The reason is rooted in Wessexian and Mercian cavalier culture. The cavaliers were noble-blood hegemonic, believed that their hegemony was sanctioned by God, and that it was not only their God-given right to engage in literacy and certain leisurely pursuits, but it was their duty, and it was God's will that the nobles, and only the nobles, should pursue these things. This cultural expression existed long before chattel slavery was ever a thing, with peasants and indentured servants being discouraged and disabled from literacy, though not necessarily legally forbidden. So these people didn't forbid literacy out of fear of peasant reprisal, they did it because they believed God had granted the privilege to them, and only them. See: Fischer, 1989. Albion's Seed.
- kimixa 3y ago
  Stating one person's theory about complex social behaviors as "fact" seems a little far, even if they did happen to write it down in a book.
  - VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    I would suggest, rather than inventing your own mythology, rather than subscribing to the mythology of HN comments without any scholarly references, rather than write off a history book because it only has a single author (would two have convinced you? perhaps three?), to go directly to the primary sources cited in the book: [1] Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer [2] The Diary of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1709-1712 These are just a couple examples, both of which are quite representative of the ideas and culture of the governing elite of the Virginia tidewater. If you engage with these primary sources, you may be able to relieve yourself of any spurious mythologies and preconceived notions.
    - kimixa 3y ago
      I think you completely missed the point here. Your statement categorically denied one proposed cause, and presented another as the sole truth for an incredibly complex social result. I don't know if you're not a native english speaker, so apologies here if that's not the case, but you seem to have fallen down the stairs with a Thesaurus. This didn't help improve the clarity of your comment in any way, and gives the perception you're trying to give your reply a veneer of intellectualism with no content behind it. What "mythology" did I present? I intentionally presented no alternative theory. The proposed theory in the book may be well be a large contributor to the end result of illiteracy in slave populations in the US at the time. But to categorically state that a single reason was true for a society consisting of millions of individuals is absurd.

by gumby 3y ago

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

> In Rome, ... teaching was all done in the home Really?? I am very surprised to hear that, I never thought there could be any other way but having schools in a structured and developed society like theirs. > OTOH the roman soldiers typically could read Not to disbelieve but can you back that up? I thought the bulk of the Roman military was from pretty low down in society and literacy is usually low to negligible there

jan_Inkepa 3y ago
> Really?? I am very surprised to hear that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_(ancient_Rome) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_(ancient_Rome) There were schools...
- gumby 3y ago
  IIRC that was a later development after the 3rd century C.E., well after the eruption of Vesuvius
  - qwytw 3y ago
    As far as we know the Romans used a similar system to the Greeks, there were usually no physical school buildings but parents did/could pool money together to hire a teacher who would teach in various public spaces etc. There are plenty of sources, anecdotes etc. describing this hundreds of years prior the the 3rd century C.E. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurius_Carvilius_Ruga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurius_Carvilius_Ruga is first person that we know of who established an actual school in Rome (and it's unlikely that there weren't any schools before that). He lived in the 3rd century B.C. (not C.E./A.D.)
  - jan_Inkepa 3y ago
    I did a quick look to search to see - I mean if anywhere has retained evidence of schools it should be Pompeii - I did a cursory search through Bloomer's book 'The School of Rome', and here are some bits from it: "The physical requirements for a grammar school were minimal: school, like any small ancient business, could be held on the street, under or above a portico, near an important public building such as a temple, or at a rented shop. A wall painting from Pompeii, now lost, showed school near a portico and decidedly amid the bustle of the city. School could be held “in private,” at the teacher’s home or the house of the patron." "Graffiti indicate schooling took place at several locations in Pompeii and at Rome. The places of instruction are unremarkable shop stalls. Two exceptions to these modest locales merit attention, since they seem to have dedicated space and indicate an education that is decidedly not modest. The emperor’s palace had a slave-training complex known as the paidagogia , and the villas of the wealthy had as part of their design semicircular recesses, or exedrae. The latter, like private libraries, are places of culture, perhaps of poetry reading or rhetorical training." (It links to footnotes which reference an Italian paper apparently saying there are disputes as to how to recognise schools as such). Anyway, yeah, very good point!
gumby 3y ago
> Really?? I am very surprised to hear that, I never thought there could be any other way but having schools in a structured and developed society like theirs. Schools as we think of them today are a pretty recent invention. Even the Academies and Gymnasium of Athens were generally for adults. There was an exception in Sparta, where education was part of the facist indoctrination, similar to the system in the DDR or USSR. Then again, Sparta was super weird even by Greek standards (which was a society whose closest modern analog might be Da'esh (AKA ISIS). The hard part of reading ancient Greek for me was not the grammar but the sheer bizarreness of their structural assumptions, which are rarely visible in translation. > > OTOH the roman soldiers typically could read > Not to disbelieve but can you back that up? I thought the bulk of the Roman military was from pretty low down in society and literacy is usually low to negligible there That's the point: it's a confounding point to my assumption of low levels of literacy among the plebians. You can do your own web search on this topic, but you might want to start with this paper: https://www.academia.edu/37000249/Soldiers_and_Documents_Insights_from_Nubia_The_Significance_of_Written_Documents_in_Roman_Soldiers_Everyday_Lives https://www.academia.edu/37000249/Soldiers_and_Documents_Ins... From its abstract: "The Roman army as an institution and the Roman soldier as an individual could not have functioned without the written word. A few newly published finds from Primis / Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia as well as a number of other documents discussed in this paper illustrate the extent to which administrative paperwork and the soldiers’ (semi-)private correspondence contributed to the army’s functioning and governed the soldiers’ everyday lives already in the first decades of the new imperial army. Other evidence shows how the formal and symbolic qualities of imperial and official texts, and administrative documents served Roman soldiers from all types of units in their private documents and monuments as a means to demonstrate military identity"
- qwytw 3y ago
  > There was an exception in Sparta, where education was part of the facist indoctrination, similar to the system in the DDR or USSR That's an interesting description considering those schools were only accessible to the elite rather than the general population. > which was a society whose closest modern analog might be Da'esh (AKA ISIS) Rather a random thing to say? I don't see that many similarities. For one thing (upper class) women in Sparta (or Rome for that matter) had considerably more rights than in Athens for instance (which was probably even worse than modern Saudi Arabia in that regard). > literacy among the plebians. Most of the Roman upper class was plebian.

qwytw 3y ago

> In Rome, unlike, say, Sparta, there were no schools; teaching was all done in the home, I'm not sure that's true. Also when people think about Sparta they usually only consider about the upper class elite since almost the entire population of the region were second class freemen with limited civil rights or slaves/serf. In any case the Spartan Agoge (which again was only accessible to a small proportion of the population) wasn't necessarily similar to what we understand a 'school'. As far as we know Roman 'educational system' was similar to that which existed in normal Greek cities (so not Sparta). Upper classes hired private tutors/bough slaves, however there were public (privately funded) schools called 'Ludus' accessible to a significant proportion of the the population. > probably comparable to India a millennium earlier (inferred from the prevalence of public proclamations (e.g. Ashoka steele), Why do you think that was the case? Also didn't Ashoka live in the 3rd century BC (so contemporary to the Hellenistic age)? > monumental writing aimed more at fellow elite. I'm not sure that was generally the case in Ancient Rome or most Greek cities. Many of the public inscriptions were clearly aimed at the general population.

dagaci 3y ago

Why is this downvoted?

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

>US chattel slaves were forbidden by law to read because it made organizing/rebelling easier and more likely That's not the reason why. The reason is rooted in Wessexian and Mercian cavalier culture. The cavaliers were noble-blood hegemonic, believed that their hegemony was sanctioned by God, and that it was not only their God-given right to engage in literacy and certain leisurely pursuits, but it was their duty, and it was God's will that the nobles, and only the nobles, should pursue these things. This cultural expression existed long before chattel slavery was ever a thing, with peasants and indentured servants being discouraged and disabled from literacy, though not necessarily legally forbidden. So these people didn't forbid literacy out of fear of peasant reprisal, they did it because they believed God had granted the privilege to them, and only them. See: Fischer, 1989. Albion's Seed.

kimixa 3y ago
Stating one person's theory about complex social behaviors as "fact" seems a little far, even if they did happen to write it down in a book.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I would suggest, rather than inventing your own mythology, rather than subscribing to the mythology of HN comments without any scholarly references, rather than write off a history book because it only has a single author (would two have convinced you? perhaps three?), to go directly to the primary sources cited in the book: [1] Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer [2] The Diary of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1709-1712 These are just a couple examples, both of which are quite representative of the ideas and culture of the governing elite of the Virginia tidewater. If you engage with these primary sources, you may be able to relieve yourself of any spurious mythologies and preconceived notions.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    I think you completely missed the point here. Your statement categorically denied one proposed cause, and presented another as the sole truth for an incredibly complex social result. I don't know if you're not a native english speaker, so apologies here if that's not the case, but you seem to have fallen down the stairs with a Thesaurus. This didn't help improve the clarity of your comment in any way, and gives the perception you're trying to give your reply a veneer of intellectualism with no content behind it. What "mythology" did I present? I intentionally presented no alternative theory. The proposed theory in the book may be well be a large contributor to the end result of illiteracy in slave populations in the US at the time. But to categorically state that a single reason was true for a society consisting of millions of individuals is absurd.