Girls too can read . . .

From Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment. A very intriguing and rigorous discussion of what constitutes accomplishment, how do we measure it, and how do we explain it.

In passing, Murray quotes a senior official from Russian-controlled Poland in 1818 commenting on the importance placed by Ashkenazi Jews upon education. It struck me as parallel to a recent reinterpretation I was reading of Max Weber's famous essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The reinterpretation argued that Weber was close to right but not quite; that it was not the religion per se that was important but rather certain cultural values which it reinforced. In particular, the author argued, it was not so much the theology of Protestantism but rather the critical role placed on a direct connection to God via reading the Bible, i.e. all members (including women) needed to be able to read. It was reading that was the dramatic differentiator - or so the author was arguing. Anyway, here is the Russian official:

Almost every one of their families hires a tutor to teach its children . . . We [Gentiles] do not have more than 868 schools in towns and villages and 27,985 pupils in all. They probably have the same number of pupils because their entire population studies. Girls too can read, even the girls of the poorest families. Every family, be it in the most modest circumstances, buys books, because there will be at least ten books in every household. Most of those inhabiting the huts in [Gentile] villages have only recently heard of an alphabet book. . . .

And now that I think about it, it also echoes de Tocqueville's amazement at the reading he found out on the frontier of early America: de Tocqueville and Reading in America, and To Diffuse Books.

In terms of how far we have progressed (or not), this Russian official in 1818 is estimating that the average Jewish home had at least 10 books. In comparison, nearly two hundred years later, inconceivably more free, and probably a 1,000 times more prosperous, the average American home has 112 books today (see blog post At Last . . . ).