literacy

literacy. The initiation of printing promoted the adoption of a standard written form, notwithstanding the extent to which different dialects continued to be spoken, and it also increased the contexts within which reading and writing might be used. The progress of literacy in English outside the urban commercial and professional classes is charted with difficulty, but the incidence of written names and marks as signatures on leases, depositions, and petitions partly indicates its diffusion. In the early 17th century the majority of male members of the gentry, particularly those of Scottish or English origin, had writing skills. At mid‐century perhaps a third of the larger leaseholders could write their names, though striking variations, influenced by sex and race, were evident. At the end of the century up to a quarter of artisans and of smaller leaseholders may have been able to write. In the towns literacy was more widespread than in the countryside, though the ability to write a name was rare amongst the poorer inhabitants, and almost entirely absent in those who were female.

Literacy levels may have risen slowly in the first half of the 18th century. They undoubtedly grew more rapidly during the second half, and at the end of the century practically all larger leaseholders and most artisans and shopkeepers had reading and writing skills. Formalized school instruction had become more common and brought literacy into households unable to afford a private teacher, but dissemination further down the social scale proved difficult without a significant increase in school supply. This was met, in part, by the teacher proprietors of hedge schools. Their unregulated methods often elicited a hostile response, particularly from those who believed that popular education would aggravate social and political discontent. Yet the appeal of literacy could not be denied nor its dissemination prevented. Evangelical philanthropists and landlords extended patronage to teacher proprietors and to teaching congregations, though at a level hardly sufficient to keep pace with increasing demand in an expanding population. In the first two decades of the 19th century a swelling coalition of political and religious interests led to substantial levels of state support for such initiatives, and from 1831 the centrally regulated and locally managed national schools became the main conduit through which an increasing proportion of the population acquired elementary skills.

Literacy in 19th‐century Ireland may be measured by census data (from 1841), and, following compulsory civil registration of marriages from 1864, by the proportion of bridegrooms and brides who signed their name. Although the usefulness of both sets of data has been questioned, they indicate, at the very least, the availability and diffusion of minimal skill levels. Moreover the results in each case show a high degree of internal consistency, while the long‐term trend, sex differences, and patterns of regional variation revealed in both sets of data are broadly similar. In 1841 47 per cent of persons over 5 were returned by heads of household as able to read; by 1911 the proportion was 88 per cent. (Throughout the early modern period the ability to read was more widespread than the ability to write, particularly amongst women, and the 19th‐century census data revealed the persistence of that differential.) Sixty‐one per cent of grooms and 49 per cent of brides in 1864 were able to sign by writing their name; the disparity between men and women had gone by 1891, when 82 per cent of all spouses wrote their names. Thereafter marking of the register is rare and in 1931, when the data series ends, 98 per cent wrote their name. Census and marriage register data also help to confirm the view that the school was the principal means through which literacy was disseminated, though not the argument that it was its scole cause. In general, higher levels of school enrolment and higher literacy levels were strongly associated with the degree to which a region experienced urbanization, with higher incomes, and with the prevalence of English.

The adoption of a compulsory elementary school attendance policy in Northern Ireland in 1923 and in the Irish Free State in 1926 led to the widespread belief that basic literacy would very soon become universal. That assumption has been successfully challenged by educationists who have shown that, notwithstanding a compulsory state curriculum in reading and writing, literacy skill in adulthood is formed and modified by occupational and social need, and that in some groups, including linguistic minorities, travellers, and the urban poor, it is frequently present at a low level or absent altogether. The debate on the precise meaning of literacy continues, intensified by the development of new information technologies and the evolving forms of the spoken language in its different social contexts.

John Logan