I joined Ancestry.com last year after watching the season.
That’s where I first saw draft cards, registration and
enlistment papers belonging to some of my ancestors--and what their signatures
looked like. Sometimes the signature is an X.
When I first saw that X signifying a relative’s name, I
felt incredibly sad to know that he couldn’t read the Bible or the newspaper,
that he couldn’t write his name. If I
couldn’t read, I’d feel helpless, at the mercy of others.
My grandfather couldn’t read. I remember mom saying he
was too mean to learn how. She was the oldest of 10 kids; the first born
usually gets all the discipline. I
don’t know that I ever witnessed any helplessness in Grandpa but he sure was at
the mercy of others when it came to reading. He made his kids read the Bible to
him, scripture after scripture, over and over again, and he listened to preachers on the radio. He
was born in 1900 and when he was five years old, his father was murdered.
I have two cousins (twins) who can barely read. Their
mom was pregnant with them when their father had emergency surgery and died.
Who knows what they experienced inside the womb when she was told her husband
was dead? She never re-married. Being
close to these two guys, I see how being unable to read or read well has
affected their lives. They don’t use X for their signatures, but they struggle.
X marks the signature of many people--even today. I find that sad.
5 comments:
It's shame that many members of the older generations coudln't read. It's thankful that the modern literacy rate is about 99.9%. I actually don't recall learning how to read, it came pretty naturally in kindergarten and first grade.
I'm also learning how to read in Japanese. It's a bit harder than A-Z since not only do they use the latin alphabet (called romaji) but symbolic characters (called Kanji) and letters than represent sounds of speech, one for Japanese words (hiragana) and foreign words (Katakana). So technically a Japanese child has to learn 4 reading systems in school.
Illiteracy really is a sad thing. It was kind of understanding back when people didn't really need to read to survive but it's a real shame that it still exists in modern society, and in such high numbers.
~ Rhonda Parrish
Yeah it is a shame that so many people today can't read, not sure that says much about our education system either.
So true. Illiteracy is a terrible problem all over the world, surprisingly even in the so-called 'advanced' countries like Canada and the US. Hopefully that WILL be remedied at some time in the future.
How interesting. I think back then they were more about surviving than being educated.
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