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68-487: The novel takes place in a rural Korean village, and follows two Korean university students who are working to promote literacy and modern agriculture in the Korean countryside. Sangnosku's main female protagonist, Chae Yeongsin, was modeled after Choi Yongshin (1909–1935), a Korean teacher and activist. Another main character, Park Dong-hyeok, is based on Sim Hun's nephew Shim Jae-yeong, also an educator and activist. The plot of

136-522: A consequence, mutually exclusive events have the property: P ( A ∩ B ) = 0 {\displaystyle P(A\cap B)=0} . For example, in a standard 52-card deck with two colors it is impossible to draw a card that is both red and a club because clubs are always black. If just one card is drawn from the deck, either a red card (heart or diamond) or a black card (club or spade) will be drawn. When A and B are mutually exclusive, P( A ∪ B ) = P( A ) + P( B ) . To find

204-421: A head and flipping a tail are collectively exhaustive events, and there is a probability of one of flipping either a head or a tail. Events can be both mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. In the case of flipping a coin, flipping a head and flipping a tail are also mutually exclusive events. Both outcomes cannot occur for a single trial (i.e., when a coin is flipped only once). The probability of flipping

272-416: A head and the probability of flipping a tail can be added to yield a probability of 1: 1/2 + 1/2 =1. In statistics and regression analysis , an independent variable that can take on only two possible values is called a dummy variable . For example, it may take on the value 0 if an observation is of a white subject or 1 if the observation is of a black subject. The two possible categories associated with

340-729: A particular social context (even if that context is "school"), and, after print acquisition, every instance of reading or writing will be for a specific purpose and occasion with particular readers and writers in mind. Reading and writing, therefore, are never separable from social and cultural elements. A corollary point made by David Barton and Rosalind Ivanić , among others, is that the cognitive and societal effects of acquiring literacy are not easily predictable, since, as Brian Street has argued, "the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being." Consequently, as Jack Goody has documented, historically, literacy has included

408-621: A resurgence as a result, and by the 15th century, paper was widespread. The Reformation stressed the importance of literacy and being able to read the Bible. The Protestant countries were the first to attain full literacy. In a more secular context, inspired by the Enlightenment , Sweden implemented programs in 1723 aimed at making the population fully literate. Other countries implemented similar measures at this time. These included Denmark in 1739, Poland in 1783, and France in 1794/5. Literacy

476-415: A set of dummy variables is constructed, each dummy variable having two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive categories — in this example, one dummy variable (called D 1 ) would equal 1 if age is less than 18, and would equal 0 otherwise ; a second dummy variable (called D 2 ) would equal 1 if age is in the range 18–64, and 0 otherwise. In this set-up, the dummy variable pairs (D 1 , D 2 ) can have

544-417: Is a single dummy variable to distinguish them, while with the three age categories two dummy variables are needed to distinguish them. Such qualitative data can also be used for dependent variables . For example, a researcher might want to predict whether someone gets arrested or not, using family income or race, as explanatory variables. Here the variable to be explained is a dummy variable that equals 0 if

612-457: Is a tautology" (it is not logically possible for more than one proposition to be true) or 2. " ¬ ( ϕ 1 ∧ ϕ 2 ∧ ϕ 3 ) {\displaystyle \lnot (\phi _{1}\land \phi _{2}\land \phi _{3})} is a tautology" (it is not logically possible for all propositions to be true at the same time). The term pairwise mutually exclusive always means

680-453: Is also gaining momentum. The traditional concept of literacy widened as a consensus emerged among researchers in composition studies , education research , and anthropological linguistics that it makes little sense to speak of reading or writing outside of a specific context, with linguist James Paul Gee describing it as "simply incoherent." For example, even the extremely early stages of acquiring mastery over symbol shapes take place in

748-482: Is concentrated among younger people," along with increased rates among rural populations and women. This evidence indicates that illiteracy is a complex phenomenon with multiple factors impacting rates of illiteracy and the type of illiteracy one may experience. Literacy has rapidly spread in several regions in the last twenty-five years, and the United Nations's global initiative with Sustainable Development Goal 4

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816-462: Is distinguished from primary illiteracy (i.e., the inability to read and write a short, simple statement concerning one's own everyday life) and learning difficulties (e.g., dyslexia ). These categories have been contested—as has the concept of "illiteracy" itself—for being predicated on narrow assumptions, primarily derived from school-based contexts, about what counts as reading and writing (e.g., comprehending and following instructions). Script

884-593: Is more consistent with an early form of Canaanite that was used c.  1100 BCE . While the earliest Greek inscriptions are dated circa 8th century BCE, epigraphical comparisons to Proto-Canaanite suggest that the Greeks may have adopted the consonantal alphabet as early as 1100 BCE and later "added in five characters to represent vowels". Phoenician, which is considered to contain the first linear alphabet, rapidly spread to Mediterranean port cities in northern Canaan. Some archeologists believe that Phoenician influenced

952-549: Is thought that they wrote from right to left and that the script is logographic . Because it has not been deciphered, linguists disagree on whether it is a complete and independent writing system; however, it is generally thought to be an independent writing system that emerged in the Harappa culture. Existing evidence suggests that most early acts of literacy were, in some areas (such as Egypt), closely tied to power and chiefly used for management practices, and probably less than 1% of

1020-502: Is thought to have developed independently at least five times in human history: in Mesopotamia , Egypt , the Indus civilization , lowland Mesoamerica , and China . Between 3500 BCE and 3000 BCE, in southern Mesopotamia, the ancient Sumerians invented writing . During this era, literacy was "a largely functional matter, propelled by the need to manage the new quantities of information and

1088-608: The Sangnoksu Station of Seoul Subway Line 4 ) is named after the novel. A Choi Yongshin Memorial Hall ( 최용신기념관대등표제 ) is located in Sangnok-gu. Literacy Literacy is the ability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition); and

1156-611: The Shang dynasty in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations, inscribed on bones, recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the early ancestors of modern Chinese script and contained logosyllabic script and numerals. By the time of the consolidation of the Chinese Empire during the Qin and Han dynasties ( c.  200 BCE ), written documents were central to

1224-565: The 4th and 5th centuries, the Church made efforts to ensure a better clergy, especially the bishops, who were expected to have a classical education—the hallmark of a socially acceptable person in higher society. Even after the remnants of the Western Roman Empire fell in the 470s, literacy continued to be a distinguishing mark of the elite, as communication skills were still important in political and church life (bishops were largely drawn from

1292-463: The Apostles' epistles or some other part of Scripture. And if he is illiterate he shall go at the first, third and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand before him and learn very studiously and with all gratitude. The fundamentals of a syllable, the verbs and nouns shall all be written for him and even if he does not want to he shall be compelled to read. During

1360-462: The Canaanite goddess Asherah . In 1948, William F. Albright deciphered the text using new evidence, including a series of inscriptions from Ugarit . Discovered in 1929 by French archaeologist Claude F. A. Schaeffer , some of these inscriptions were mythological texts (written in an early Canaanite dialect) that consisted of a 30-letter cuneiform consonantal alphabet. Another significant discovery

1428-587: The Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets, as these languages evolved during the same time period, share similar features, and are commonly categorized into the same language group. When the Israelites migrated to Canaan between 1200 and 1000 BCE, they adopted a variation of the Canaanite alphabet. Baruch ben Neriah , Jeremiah's scribe, used this alphabet to create the later scripts of the Old Testament . The early Hebrew alphabet

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1496-737: The Kingdom of Nabataea, then to the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas, eventually making its way to Africa; and east, where it later influenced the development of the Brahmi script in India. Over the next few centuries, Imperial Aramaic script in Persia evolved into Pahlavi , "as well as for a range of alphabets used by early Turkish and Mongol tribes in Siberia , Mongolia and Turkestan ". During this period, literacy spread among

1564-701: The Late Bronze Age , successor alphabets appeared throughout the Mediterranean region and were used in Phoenician , Hebrew , and Aramaic . According to Goody, these cuneiform scripts may have influenced the development of the Greek alphabet several centuries later. Historically, the Greeks contended that their writing system was modeled after the Phoenicians. However, many Semitic scholars now believe that Ancient Greek

1632-758: The Pacific , as well as Latin America and the Caribbean , have adult literacy rates over 90%. In other regions, illiteracy persists at higher rates; as of 2013, the adult literacy rate in South Asia and North Africa was 67.55% and 59.76% in Sub-Saharan Africa . In much of the world, high youth literacy rates suggest that illiteracy will become less common as more educated younger generations replace less educated older ones. However, in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where

1700-648: The benefits of literacy, some recent literature in economics, starting with the work of Kaushik Basu and James Foster, distinguishes between a "proximate illiterate" and an "isolated illiterate". A "proximate illiterate" lives in a household with literate members, while an "isolated illiterate" lives in a household where everyone is illiterate. Isolated illiteracy is more common among older populations in wealthier nations, where people are less likely to live in multigenerational households with potentially literate relatives. A 2018/2019 UNESCO report noted that "conversely, in low and lower middle income countries, isolated illiteracy

1768-508: The book and the register" and that "no one, either free or slave, could afford to be illiterate". Similarly, Dupont points out, "The written word was all around them, in both public and private life: laws, calendars, regulations at shrines, and funeral epitaphs were engraved in stone or bronze. The Republic amassed huge archives of reports on every aspect of public life." The imperial civilian administration produced masses of documentation used in judicial, fiscal, and administrative matters, as did

1836-471: The book's introduction. Sim Hun won the Dong-A Ilbo 15th Anniversary Full-Length Novel Contest, and used much of the prize money ( KRW 100, which was a significant sum at the time) to help establish Sangnok Elementary School. Sim Hun had plans to make the novel into a movie, but he died shortly after completing the novel. His plans, however, were eventually realized by others, resulting in two movies based on

1904-705: The common people, both in town and country, are equally intense in their admiration. Frequently, have we seen the butcher-boy, with his tray on his shoulder, reading with the greatest avidity the last "Pickwick"; the footman (whose fopperies are so inimitably laid bare), the maidservant, the chimney sweep, all classes, in fact, read "Boz". From the mid-19th century onward, the Second Industrial Revolution saw technological improvements in paper production. The new distribution networks, enabled by improved roads and rail, resulted in an increased capacity to supply printed material. Social and educational changes increased

1972-466: The competition of the world. In the late 19th century, gas and electric lighting were becoming more common in private homes, replacing candlelight and oil lamps, enabling reading after dark and increasing the appeal of literacy. Data published by UNESCO shows that the worldwide literacy rate among adults has increased, on average, by 5 percentage points every decade since 1950, from 55.7% in 1950 to 86.2% in 2015. Due to rapid population growth , while

2040-525: The demand for reading matter, as rising literacy rates, particularly among the middle and working classes, created a new mass market for printed material. Wider schooling helped increase literacy rates, which in turn helped lower the cost of publication. Unskilled labor forces were common in Western Europe, and, as British industry improved, more engineers and skilled workers who could handle technical instructions and complex situations were needed. Literacy

2108-474: The first card drawn was replaced before the second drawing since without replacement there is one fewer card after the first card was drawn. The probabilities of the individual events (red, and club) are multiplied rather than added. The probability of drawing a red and a club in two drawings without replacement is then 26/52 × 13/51 × 2 = 676/2652 , or 13/51. With replacement, the probability would be 26/52 × 13/52 × 2 = 676/2704 , or 13/52. In probability theory,

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2176-420: The formation and policing of a hierarchical bureaucratic governance structure reinforced through law. Within this legal order, written records kept track of and controlled citizen movements, created records of misdeeds, and documented the actions and judgments of government officials. Indus script is largely pictorial and has not yet been deciphered; as such, it is unknown whether it includes abstract signs. It

2244-819: The former. In probability theory , events E 1 , E 2 , ..., E n are said to be mutually exclusive if the occurrence of any one of them implies the non-occurrence of the remaining n  − 1 events. Therefore, two mutually exclusive events cannot both occur. Formally said, X {\displaystyle X} is a set of mutually exclusive events if and only if given any E i , E j ∈ X {\displaystyle E_{i},E_{j}\in X} , if E i ≠ E j {\displaystyle E_{i}\neq E_{j}} then E i ∩ E j = ∅ {\displaystyle E_{i}\cap E_{j}=\varnothing } . As

2312-609: The iconography emphasized power among royals and other elites. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the first notation system to have phonetic values; these symbols are called phonograms . Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first used by the Olmec and Zapotec civilizations in 900–400 BCE. These civilizations used glyphic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems. The earliest written notations in China date back to

2380-522: The importance of reading instruction that focuses on "alphabetic representations". However, these are not mutually exclusive , as children can become proficient in word-reading while engaging with multiliteracies. Word reading is fundamental for multiple forms of communication. Beginning in the 1940s, the term literacy has often been used to mean having knowledge or skill in a particular field, such as: Functional illiteracy relates to adults and has been defined in different ways: Functional illiteracy

2448-497: The lack of a suitable writing medium, as when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the import of papyrus to Europe ceased. Since papyrus perishes easily and does not last well in the wetter European climate, parchment was used, which was expensive and accessible only by the church and the wealthy. Paper was introduced into Europe via Spain in the 11th century and spread north slowly over the next four centuries. Literacy saw

2516-420: The merchant classes, and 15-20% of the total population may have been literate. The Aramaic language declined with the spread of Islam , which was accompanied by the spread of Arabic . Until recently, it was thought that the majority of people were illiterate in the classical world, though recent work challenges this perception. Anthony DiRenzo asserts that Roman society was "a civilization based on

2584-488: The municipalities. The army kept extensive records relating to supply and duty rosters and submitted reports. Merchants, shippers, and landowners (and their personal staffs), especially of the larger enterprises, must have been literate. In the late fourth century, the Desert Father Pachomius would expect the literacy of a candidate for admission to his monasteries: They shall give him twenty Psalms or two of

2652-473: The new type of governance created by trade and large scale production". Early writing systems first emerged as a recording system in which people used tokens with impressed markings to manage trade and agricultural production. The token system served as a precursor to early cuneiform writing once people began recording information on clay tablets. Proto-Cuneiform texts exhibit not only numerical signs but also ideograms depicting objects being counted. Though

2720-563: The novel as part of an effort to promote education in the Korean countryside during the Japanese occupation of Korea . The practice of helping rural communities in Korea is known as nonghwal  [ ko ] , and Sangoksu s female protagonist has been called "a quintessential portrait of such colonial period enlightenment activity". The novel was influenced by Yi Kwang-su , a Korean writer and independence and nationalist activist, who also wrote

2788-705: The novel concerns their attempts to balance romance and love with dedication to their educational mission. They agree to spend three years in the countryside before getting married, but Yongshin dies from overwork; Dong-hyeok swears to continue his efforts to promote literacy on her grave. Sim Hun wrote Sangoksu in 1935 while living in Pilgyeongsa house in Dangjin , Chungcheongnam-do. It was originally serialized in 127 installments published from 10 September 1935 to 15 February 1936 in The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. Sim Hun wrote

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2856-503: The novel. The novel has been made into a 1961 movie, The Evergreen Tree  [ ko ] , by Shin Sang-ok . Another version of The Evergreen Tree movie was made by Im Kwon-taek in 1978. The novel is considered Sim Hun's most famous work. It has also been described as "one of the most important Korean rural enlightenment novels". The neighborhood of Sangnok-gu in Ansan (served by

2924-412: The observed subject does not get arrested and equals 1 if the subject does get arrested. In such a situation, ordinary least squares (the basic regression technique) is widely seen as inadequate; instead probit regression or logistic regression is used. Further, sometimes there are three or more categories for the dependent variable — for example, no charges, charges, and death sentences. In this case,

2992-482: The origin of the alphabet. Many classical scholars, such as historian Ignace Gelb , credit the Ancient Greeks for creating the first alphabetic system ( c.  750 BCE ) that used distinctive signs for consonants and vowels. Goody contests: The importance of Greek culture of the subsequent history of Western Europe has led to an over-emphasis, by classicists and others, on the addition of specific vowel signs to

3060-428: The outcomes 1 and 4 of a single roll of a six-sided die are mutually exclusive (both cannot happen at the same time) but not collectively exhaustive (there are other possible outcomes; 2,3,5,6). In logic , two propositions ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } and ψ {\displaystyle \psi } are mutually exclusive if it is not logically possible for them to be true at

3128-747: The percentage of adults who were illiterate decreased, the actual number of illiterate adults increased from 700 million in 1950 to 878 million in 1990, before starting to decrease and falling to 745 million by 2015. The number of illiterate adults remains higher than in 1950, "despite decades of universal education policies, literacy interventions and the spread of print material and information and communications technology (ICT)". Available global data indicates significant variations in literacy rates between world regions. North America, Europe, West Asia , and Central Asia have almost achieved full literacy for men and women aged 15 or older. Most countries in East Asia and

3196-466: The period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, including the social and cultural aspects of reading and writing and functional literacy . The range of definitions of literacy used by NGOs , think tanks , and advocacy groups since the 1990s suggests that this shift in understanding from "discrete skill" to "social practice" is both ongoing and uneven. Some definitions remain fairly closely aligned with

3264-635: The population was literate, as it was confined to a very small group. Scholarship by others, such as Dominique Charpin and a project from the European Union , however, suggest that this was not the case in all ancient societies: both Charpin and the EU's emerging scholarship suggest that writing and literacy were far more widespread in Mesopotamia than scholars previously thought. According to social anthropologist Jack Goody , there are two interpretations regarding

3332-409: The probability of drawing a red card or a club, for example, add together the probability of drawing a red card and the probability of drawing a club. In a standard 52-card deck, there are twenty-six red cards and thirteen clubs: 26/52 + 13/52 = 39/52 or 3/4. One would have to draw at least two cards in order to draw both a red card and a club. The probability of doing so in two draws depends on whether

3400-404: The probability of drawing a red or a king is 26/52 + 4/52 – 2/52 = 28/52. Events are collectively exhaustive if all the possibilities for outcomes are exhausted by those possible events, so at least one of those outcomes must occur. The probability that at least one of the events will occur is equal to one. For example, there are theoretically only two possibilities for flipping a coin. Flipping

3468-433: The same time. A clear example is the set of outcomes of a single coin toss, which can result in either heads or tails, but not both. In the coin-tossing example, both outcomes are, in theory, collectively exhaustive , which means that at least one of the outcomes must happen, so these two possibilities together exhaust all the possibilities. However, not all mutually exclusive events are collectively exhaustive. For example,

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3536-701: The same time; that is, ¬ ( ϕ ∧ ψ ) {\displaystyle \lnot (\phi \land \psi )} is a tautology. To say that more than two propositions are mutually exclusive, depending on the context, means either 1. " ¬ ( ϕ 1 ∧ ϕ 2 ) ∧ ¬ ( ϕ 1 ∧ ϕ 3 ) ∧ ¬ ( ϕ 2 ∧ ϕ 3 ) {\displaystyle \lnot (\phi _{1}\land \phi _{2})\land \lnot (\phi _{1}\land \phi _{3})\land \lnot (\phi _{2}\land \phi _{3})}

3604-526: The senatorial class) in a new cultural synthesis that made "Christianity the Roman religion". However, these skills were less needed in the absence of a large imperial administrative apparatus whose middle and top echelons were dominated by the elite. Even so, in pre-modern times, it is unlikely that literacy was found in more than about 30–40% of the population. During the Dark Ages , the highest percentage of literacy

3672-602: The set of consonantal ones that had been developed earlier in Western Asia. Many scholars argue that the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of northern Canaan invented the consonantal alphabet as early as 1500 BCE. Much of this theory's development is credited to English archeologist Flinders Petrie , who, in 1905, came across a series of Canaanite inscriptions in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem . Ten years later, English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner reasoned that these letters contain an alphabet as well as references to

3740-737: The seventh century BCE. In the Near East , it was common to record events on clay using the cuneiform script; however, writing Aramaic on leather parchments became common during the Neo-Assyrian empire. With the rise of the Persians in the 5th century BCE, Achaemenid rulers adopted Aramaic as the "diplomatic language". Darius the Great standardized Aramaic, which became the Imperial Aramaic script. This Imperial Aramaic alphabet rapidly spread: west, to

3808-532: The traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take a broader view: The concept of multiliteracies has gained currency, particularly in English Language Arts curricula, on the grounds that reading "is interactive and informative, and occurs in ever-increasingly technological settings where information is part of spatial, audio, and visual patterns (Rhodes & Robnolt, 2009)". Objections have been raised that this concept downplays

3876-530: The traditional view had been that cuneiform literacy was restricted to a class of scribes, assyriologists including Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin have argued that functional literacy was somewhat widespread by the Old Babylonian period. Nonetheless, professional scribes became central to law, finances, accounting, government, administration, medicine, magic, divination, literature, and prayers. Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged between 3300 BCE and 3100 BCE;

3944-471: The transformation of social systems that rely on literacy and the changing uses of literacy within those evolving systems. According to 2015 data collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics , about two-thirds (63%) of the world's illiterate adults are women. This disparity was even starker in previous decades, and from 1970 to 2000, the global gender gap in literacy decreased significantly. Around

4012-412: The two possible values are mutually exclusive, so that no observation falls into more than one category, and the categories are exhaustive, so that every observation falls into some category. Sometimes there are three or more possible categories, which are pairwise mutually exclusive and are collectively exhaustive — for example, under 18 years of age, 18 to 64 years of age, and age 65 or above. In this case

4080-415: The values (1,0) (under 18), (0,1) (between 18 and 64), or (0,0) (65 or older) (but not (1,1), which would nonsensically imply that an observed subject is both under 18 and between 18 and 64). Then the dummy variables can be included as independent (explanatory) variables in a regression. The number of dummy variables is always one less than the number of categories: with the two categories black and white there

4148-471: The vast majority of the world's illiterate youth live, lower school enrollment implies that illiteracy will persist to a greater degree. According to 2013 data, the youth literacy rate (ages 15 to 24) is 84% in South Asia and North Africa and 70% in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the distinction between literacy and illiteracy is not clear-cut. Given that having a literate person in the household confers many of

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4216-437: The word or allows for the possibility of both events happening. The probability of one or both events occurring is denoted P( A ∪ B ) and in general, it equals P( A ) + P( B ) – P( A ∩ B ). Therefore, in the case of drawing a red card or a king, drawing any of a red king, a red non-king, or a black king is considered a success. In a standard 52-card deck, there are twenty-six red cards and four kings, two of which are red, so

4284-847: The year 2013, however, this progress stagnated, with the gender gap holding almost constant over the last two decades. In general, the gender gap in literacy was not as pronounced as the regional gap; that is, differences between countries were often larger than gender differences within countries. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest overall literacy rate and the widest gender gap: 52% of adult women and 68% of adult men are literate. A similar gender disparity exists in North Africa , where 70% of adult women are literate versus 86% of adult men. In South Asia, 58% of adult women and 77% of adult men are literate. Mutual exclusivity In logic and probability theory , two events (or propositions) are mutually exclusive or disjoint if they cannot both occur at

4352-522: Was essential to be hired. A senior government official told Parliament in 1870: Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity. It is of no use trying to give technical teaching to our citizens without elementary education; uneducated labourers—and many of our labourers are utterly uneducated—are, for the most part, unskilled labourers, and if we leave our work–folk any longer unskilled, notwithstanding their strong sinews and determined energy, they will become overmatched in

4420-466: Was found among the clergy and monks, as they made up much of the staff needed to administer the states of western Europe. An abundance of graffiti written in the Nabataean script dating back to the beginning of the first millennium CE has been taken to imply a relatively high degree of literacy among the general population in the ancient Arabic-speaking world. Post-Antiquity illiteracy was made worse by

4488-542: Was made in 1953 when three arrowheads were uncovered, each containing identical Canaanite inscriptions from 12th century BCE. According to Frank Moore Cross , these inscriptions consisted of alphabetic signs that originated during the transitional development from pictographic script to a linear alphabet. Moreover, he asserts, "These inscriptions also provided clues to extend the decipherment of earlier and later alphabetic texts". The Canaanite script's consonantal system inspired alphabetical developments in later systems. During

4556-519: Was prominent in the Mediterranean region until Neo-Babylonian rulers exiled the Jews to Babylon in the 6th century BCE. It was then that the new script ( Square Hebrew ) emerged, and the older one rapidly died out. The Aramaic alphabet also emerged sometime between 1200 and 1000 BCE. Although early examples are scarce, archeologists have uncovered a wide range of later Aramaic texts, written as early as

4624-669: Was well established in early 18th century England, when books geared towards children became far more common. Near the end of the century, as many as 50 were printed every year in major cities around England. In the 19th century, reading would become even more common in the United Kingdom. Public notes, broadsides, handbills, catchpennies and printed songs would have been usual street literature before newspapers became common. Other forms of popular reading material included advertising for events, theaters, and goods for sale. In his 1836/1837 Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens's said that: even

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