A response to those who advocate ‘modern’ English versions on the grounds that English speaking youth have been poorly educated.
This is not a response to those who advocate ‘modern’ English versions on the grounds that the Elizabethan English of the KJV is indeed a ‘foreign’ language. (I don’t believe it is, but that is a different debate.)
There was a time when the literacy rate of the US was much higher than it is today.
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Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?” “The Underground History of American Education, Chapter 3: Eyeless in Gaza”, John Taylor Gatto, former New York City “Teacher of the Year”, available at: Table of Contents - John Taylor Gatto |
Gatto goes on to say that during WWII 18 million American men were given “low-level” academic tests before induction into military service. It was found that among those 18 million, 96 % of them “were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier.” Six years later, during the Korean War, that literacy rate had dropped to 81%, “Even though all that was needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth-grade reading proficiency.” By the end of the Vietnam War, in 1973, the literacy rate had dropped to 73%.
Plummeting literacy rates in the US coincide with the rise of compulsory state education in the 20th century. In the previous century, children were by and large homeschooled by parents whose goal was to teach their children to read the KJV. Just look at the popularity of the “Blue Back Speller” and the “New England Primer”, the latter of which remained in print even into the 20th century. Both of these textbooks taught the English of the KJV.
Ever since the American people have abdicated the education of their youth to the pagan state literacy rates have fallen to the point that a real crisis has developed.
In 2004, a joint task force of professors from both the University of California and the California State University systems issued a report. It was titled “Academic Literacy: A Statement of Competencies Expected of Students Entering California’s Public Colleges and Universities.”
The report reflected CA university professors answers to three main questions:
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• What do they expect of their students' reading, writing, and critical thinking?
• How well are their students prepared for those expectations, and why or why not?
• How do they expect their students to acquire these skills, experiences or
competencies that they are missing at matriculation? (Pg. 1)
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Here is a brief list of recommendations contained in the report:
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• Analytical thinking must be taught, and students must be encouraged to apply those analytical abilities to their own endeavors as well as to the work of others.
• Students must assume a measure of responsibility for their own learning, must discern crucial values of the academic community, must seek assistance when they need it, and must advocate for their own learning in diverse situations.
• Self-advocacy is a valuable practice that emerges from the recognition that education is a partnership.
• Successful students understand that reading and writing are the lifeblood of educated people.
• 83% of faculty say that the lack of analytical reading skills contributes to students' lack of success in a course.
• Reading is generally not formally taught after a certain point in students' K-12 education.
• Teachers in all disciplines must help students develop effective critical reading strategies.
• We must teach our students to be active makers of meaning and teach them the strategies all good readers employ: to think critically, to argue, to compare, to own an idea, and to remember. Reading is a process that requires time and reflection, and that stimulates imagination, analysis, and inquiry. (pg. 3,4)
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This is in spite of the fact that in 1996 the California Education Round Table issued a set of standards that required these expectations for incoming university students.
In other words, the standards placed on public schools were not working. The report says that only “33% of the students are prepared to analyze information or arguments based on their reading.” (pg. 17) “83% of the surveyed faculty say that the lack of analytical reading skills contributes to students’ lack of success in a course.” (pg. 18)
The report points to three things that contribute to this underpreparation:
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(1) Reading is not well supported in the culture.
(2) Reading is not formally taught after a certain point in students’ education.
(3) Too frequently, the teaching of reading, thinking, and writing falls solely on the high-school English teacher… (pg. 20)
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What we see in American history, I believe, is a pattern. As we lower expectations for literacy, we lower the literacy rate itself. There is an axiom among teachers that lower standards means lower achievement. (Just look at the CA High School Exit Exam) There was a time in our country when the expectation was that a young person would/should/needed to read the KJV. That was a time when the literacy rate was the highest. As we have more and more removed the KJV as the ‘standard’ for literacy, our literacy rate has continued to fall.
So before we go altruistically advocating ‘modern’ English versions of the Bible because American youth can’t read ‘good’, let us stop and think about what would benefit them more? A continued lowering of expectations, or a new commitment to the KJV?