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Article: Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- June 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America. By E. Jennifer Monaghan. (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. Pp. 504. $49.95.)
This is a deceptively complex book about a deceptively simple subject. One of the modernization theorists' central claims about the British American colonies was widespread literacy. Such book-learning supposedly enabled and empowered early Americans, breaking down the authority of tradition and hegemony while freeing the individual to seek economic and political independence. Literacy thus became the forerunner to the American Revolution, democratic republicanism, and rugged individualism. E. Jennifer Monaghan's ...