(no subject)
In 1936, Holland D. Roberts wrote in the English Journal:
"Or shall it be an expanding democratic economy in which well prepared well-paid teachers instruct small classes of twenty or less so successfully that the term 'remedial reading' passes out of our vocabulary?"
"The silent-reading program of those who believe in a creative Americanism aimed to build a society which will provide ample food, shelter, clothing, medical care, social insurance, work, and free education from nursery school through the university for all the children of all time...."
~ ~ ~
Perhaps it's the stress of writing a paper about literacies in the 1920s and 1930s (hence the quotes from the English Journal), but I almost cried reading that.
They imagined such a better society--a better world--than the one we're living in, seventy years later. What went wrong? Do we even, collectively, imagine such a place anymore?
[I apologize for the three depressing posts in a row. It's that time of the semester.]