"Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people"
About this Quote
Mackay’s line quietly punctures a comforting myth: that reading has always been the default condition of “civilized” life. By framing universal literacy as a specifically 20th-century project, he shifts literacy from nature to policy. It’s not something societies simply evolve into; it’s something they choose to build, fund, and enforce. The sentence lands because it treats literacy less like a moral badge and more like infrastructure - unevenly distributed until states decided it shouldn’t be.
The subtext is about power. When “reading and writing” are “confined” to a “small, highly educated class,” that class doesn’t just hold skills; it holds gatekeeping authority over law, religion, commerce, and history itself. Paperwork becomes permission. Contracts become traps. Scripture becomes mediation. Even the word “professional” does double duty: it signals expertise, but also the emergence of literacy as a credentialed monopoly, a way of sorting who gets to participate in public life and who must rely on intermediaries.
Context matters: the 20th century is when mass schooling, standardized curricula, cheap print, and later broadcast media collided with nation-building and democracy’s expanding promises. Universal literacy wasn’t only an uplift narrative; it was an administrative necessity for industrial economies and modern states that run on forms, instructions, and compliance. Mackay’s restraint is the point: he doesn’t moralize, he historicizes. That move invites a harder question behind the calm phrasing: if literacy could be withheld for centuries, what “universal” skills today are still being treated as privileges in disguise?
The subtext is about power. When “reading and writing” are “confined” to a “small, highly educated class,” that class doesn’t just hold skills; it holds gatekeeping authority over law, religion, commerce, and history itself. Paperwork becomes permission. Contracts become traps. Scripture becomes mediation. Even the word “professional” does double duty: it signals expertise, but also the emergence of literacy as a credentialed monopoly, a way of sorting who gets to participate in public life and who must rely on intermediaries.
Context matters: the 20th century is when mass schooling, standardized curricula, cheap print, and later broadcast media collided with nation-building and democracy’s expanding promises. Universal literacy wasn’t only an uplift narrative; it was an administrative necessity for industrial economies and modern states that run on forms, instructions, and compliance. Mackay’s restraint is the point: he doesn’t moralize, he historicizes. That move invites a harder question behind the calm phrasing: if literacy could be withheld for centuries, what “universal” skills today are still being treated as privileges in disguise?
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Hugh
Add to List
