Literacy And Mothering

How Women's Schooling Changes the Lives of the World's Children

Robert E. Levine, Sara Levine, Beatrice Schnell-Anzola, Meridith L. Rowe, and Enily Dexter

Oxford University Press, PSU LC 1421 .L58 2012

Lots of details about four country ( Nepal, Zambia, Venezuela, Mexico ) studies (1983 through 2000) of western style schooling of girls. The effects on literacy, and behavior of the mothers those girls become. Literacy is not binary; more training improves the quality of reading. Even a year or two of school can help women understand literate ways of thinking, which makes dealings with government and medical bureacracies more productive and successful.

Exposure to classroom norms creates mental models of teacher-student relationships, and encourages verbal information exchange. Pre-education cultures pass knowledge from older to younger children, parents do not explicitly teach language or ideas, merely issue commands. Educated (even partly educated) women act as "pupils" to medical professionals and learn more about health behaviors. Educated women talk to their children, enlarging their vocabularies.

Western-model education teaches categorical and socratic abstract thinking. Educated mothers teach this to their pre-school children.

Server Sky Implications

Radio is few to many. With high bandwidth and massive computation, radio can be indivudualized. Imagine capturing "mother's voice" and using it to teach children a wide range of ideas.

• pg xv, "Educate all classes; improve the women & mankind must improve." -- Charles Darwin, 1838

• pg xv, education of women between 1990 and 2009, 50% reduction in childhood mortality.
• pg xx, "school-transmitted culture", Gellner 2006 p 35
• pg 4, Mass schooling arose in Europe and North America between 1550 and 1800 CE. Began with reformation, individual access to scripture through literacy.
• pg 6, not Enlightenment: Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Kant, Burke unreceptive to mass schooling. Adam .Smith, Helvetius, Condorcet, and Wollstonecraft approved.
• pg 8, 18th century, large-scale education in Prussia. Johann Gottlieb Fichte "spiritual father of German educational reform"
• pg 9, Horace Mann visits Prussian schools in 1843, Massachusetts adopts in 1852
• pg 10, industrial child labor reduced school attendance and literacy
• pg 11, nationalism and Prussian victory catalyzed compulsory schooling in the 1870s
• pg 12, American mass schooling driven by Protestant literacy and civic boosterism
• pg 13, uniform schooling supports uniform bureaucracy
• pg 13, Western girl's primary education accepted by 1800s
• pg 14, Western schools teach deductive reasoning and abstract language
• pg 16, school enrollments doubled between 1960 and 1980
• pg 21, average woman 1950: uneducated, married at 15, 5 children, 2 die before 5
• pg 22, average woman 2000: primary or secondary school, married after 18, 2 or 3 children, few deaths
• pg 24, Matlab area in rural Bangladesh, 200k people in 142 villages
• pg 26, Cebu city region in Phillipines, 1 million residents
• pg 28, INCAP, four rural villages in eastern Guatemala
• pg 40, Iran, fertility drop from 7.0 in 1986 to 1.98 in 2000, later marriage and contraceptives, more schooling
• pg 46, UNSCO literacy rates are inflated self-declaration. Nepal: 28% of claimed literates score 0 on reading tests
• pg 48, literacy not dichotomy, but a range of skills. Definitions vary
• pg 49, prose literacy after completed secondary ed: 2.3% Poland, 14% Germany and US, 31% Sweden
• pg 50, premodern gurkula, cheder, Qur'anic schools, memorizing, reproducing, intoning texts without full understanding
• pg 51, practical (car) vs. abstract (vehicle) understanding, west teaches deductive reasoning
• pg 52, deductive reasoning in classroom unlike context-specific deduction
• pg 53, East Asian schooling inclines towards relationa, holistic, functional ways
• pg 53, child spends 4000 hours in classroom during 5 years in school
• pg 54, child learns to pay attention to expert and respond to questions
• pg 54, unschooled girls expected to learn from older girls
• pg 54, Max Weber, bureaucracy regulates by abstract rules, partrimonialism bestows favors and individual privileges
• pg 63, Zambia most years of schooling, poorest schools, Copper crash and AIDS brought poor outcomes

Mexico (Cuernavaca, Tilzapotla), Zambia ( Ndola/Chifubu ), Venezuela ( La Silsa/Caracas ), Nepal ( )

• pg 80, Tilzapotla "old timers" access ejido communal land, "newcomers" lack collateral

• pg 81, Venezuela in 1992, 20M, 90% urbanized, oil dependent, 90% of adult women schooled
• pg 85, Zambia in 1990, 8M, 42% urbanized, copper dependent, Ndola 2nd largest city 330K in 1990, Chifubu northern township
• pg 88, Nepal in 2010, 27M, mostly rural. 86% of women unschooled in 1996, Kathmandu 530K in 1990s.
• pg 91, 1990 People's Movement or revolution. English fluency essential for middle class
• pg 97, Retention: poorly equipped schools do not teach much text literacy, but they improve listening and comprehension.
• pg 100, Comprehension and nouns - competency increases throughout schooling, even a little bit helps
• pg 122, literacy helps understanding of radio messages, medical instructions
• pg 127, maternal speech prepares children for school