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73-699: Various groups, including the Immigration Restriction League had supported literacy as a prerequisite for immigration from its formation in 1894. In 1895, Henry Cabot Lodge had introduced a bill to the United States Senate to impose a mandate for literacy for immigrants, using a test requiring them to read five lines from the Constitution. Though the bill passed, it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt lent support for

146-697: 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 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

219-506: A literacy requirement as a means to limit poorly-educated immigrants who would lower the wage scale. Potential immigrants had to be able to read their own language. Congress passed the literacy bill for the first time in 1896, which set the ability to read at least 40 words in any language as a requirement for admission to the United States. President Grover Cleveland vetoed that bill in 1897. President William Taft also vetoed

292-420: A literacy requirement was passed. It was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson because he felt that literacy tests denied equal opportunity to those who had not been educated. As early as 1882, previous immigration acts had levied head taxes on aliens entering the country to offset the cost of their care if they became indigent. These acts excluded immigrants from Canada or Mexico, as did subsequent amendments to

365-486: A literacy test in 1913. Again in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed such a bill. But in 1917 Congress overrode Wilson's veto and instituted the first literacy requirement for naturalization as part of the Immigration Act of 1917. The law stated that immigrants over 16 years of age should read 30 to 80 words in ordinary use in any language. The test however proved to be largely irrelevant, as literacy rates by

438-729: 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

511-407: 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 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

584-618: A quota of 100 immigrants per year. The Immigration Act of 1917 was later altered formally by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 , known as the McCarran-Walter Act. McCarren-Walter extended the privilege of naturalization to Japanese, Koreans , and other Asians, revised all previous laws and regulations regarding immigration, naturalization, and nationality, and collected them into one comprehensive statute. Legislation barring homosexuals as immigrants remained part of

657-632: 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

730-473: 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 the traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take

803-453: 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

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876-489: 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

949-526: 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 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

1022-597: 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

1095-522: 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 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

1168-804: The Malay States , the Dutch East Indies , the Soviet Union east of the Ural Mountains , and most Polynesian islands. Neither the Philippines nor Japan was included in the Asiatic Barred Zone. The description of the zone is as follows: ...unless otherwise provided for by existing treaties, persons who are natives of islands not possessed by the United States adjacent to the continent of Asia, situated south of

1241-441: 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

1314-791: The fiftieth parallel of latitude north , except that portion of said territory situate between the fiftieth and the sixth-fourth meridians of longitude east from Greenwich and the twenty-fourth and thirty-eight parallels of latitude north , and no alien now in any way excluded from, or prevented from entering, the United States shall be admitted to the United States. The 1917 Asian exclusions did not apply to those working in certain professional occupations and their immediate families: "(1) Government officers, (2) ministers or religious teachers, (3) missionaries, (4) lawyers, (5) physicians, (6) chemists, (7) civil engineers, (8) teachers, (9) students, (10) authors, (11) artists, (12) merchants, and (13) travelers for curiosity or pleasure". The law also increased

1387-428: The twentieth parallel latitude north , west of the one hundred and sixtieth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich, and north of the tenth parallel of latitude south , or who are natives of any country, province, or dependency situated on the continent of Asia west of the one hundred and tenth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and east of the fiftieth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and south of

1460-578: 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

1533-468: 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

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1606-467: 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

1679-604: 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

1752-763: 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

1825-731: 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

1898-525: The League introduced a bill into the Congress to increase the restriction of immigration by means of numerical limitation. The goal of this bill, called "An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence in, the United States," was to reduce as much as possible the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe while increasing the number of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe who

1971-445: The League thought were people with kindred values. The bill provided for these reductions: The bill asked for an increase of the duty paid by alien passengers to enter the United States from two to five dollars. It excluded the citizens of the United States, Canada , Mexico , and Cuba . The League demanded an increase in duty in order to properly support and maintain the inspection and deportation of immigrants. Among other things,

2044-509: The League were, "convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe." Established during a period of increasing anti-immigration sentiment in the United States , the League was founded by Boston Brahmins such as Henry Cabot Lodge with the purpose of preventing immigrants from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe from immigrating to

2117-787: 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

2190-899: The US and the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was made with Japan to cease Japanese immigration to the US. On February 5, 1917, the Immigration Act of 1917 was passed by the 64th United States Congress with an overwhelming majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson 's December 14, 1916, veto. This act added to and consolidated the list of undesirables banned from entering the country, including: alcoholics, anarchists, contract laborers, criminals, convicts, epileptics, "feebleminded persons", "idiots", "illiterates", "imbeciles", "insane persons", "paupers", "persons afflicted with contagious disease", "persons being mentally or physically defective", "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority", "political radicals", polygamists, prostitutes, and vagrants. For

2263-456: The US due to a belief that they were racially inferior to Northern Europeans and Western Europeans . The League argued that the American way of life was threatened by immigration from these regions, and lobbied Washington to pass anti-immigration legislation restricting the entry of what they perceived as "undesirable" immigrants in order to uphold Old Stock Americans hegemony. The league

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2336-468: 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 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

2409-440: The amount of the head tax. The Immigration Act of 1882 prohibited entry to the US for convicts , indigent people who could not provide for their own care, prostitutes , and lunatics or idiots. The Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885 prohibited employers from contracting with foreign laborers and bringing them into the US, though US employers continued to recruit Mexican contract laborers assuming they would just return home. After

2482-429: 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 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

2555-486: The assassination of President William McKinley by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, several immigration Acts were passed which broadened the defined categories of "undesireables." The Immigration Act of 1903 expanded barred categories to include anarchists, epileptics and those who had had episodes of insanity . Those who had infectious diseases and those who had physical or mental disabilities which would hamper their ability to work were added to

2628-648: 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

2701-508: 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

2774-717: 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

2847-466: 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

2920-565: 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 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,

2993-532: 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

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3066-639: 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 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

3139-476: The federal sphere. Exclusion of women aimed to cement a bachelor society, making Chinese men unable to form families and thus, transient, temporary immigrants. Barred categories expanded with the Page Act of 1875 , which established that Chinese, Japanese , and oriental bonded labor , convicts, and prostitutes were forbidden entry to the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese people from entering

3212-578: The first American anti-immigrant think tank, the League also started to employ lobbyists in Washington after 1900 and built a broad anti-immigrant coalition consisting of patriotic societies, farmers' associations, Southern and New England legislators, and eugenicists who supported the League's goals. Active in lobbying for the passage of what became the Immigration Act of 1917 , the League disbanded after Hall's death in 1921. On April 8, 1918,

3285-467: 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 the set of consonantal ones that had been developed earlier in Western Asia. Many scholars argue that

3358-570: The first time, an immigration law of the US affected European immigration, with the provision barring all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate . Literacy was defined as the ability to read 30–40 words of their own language from an ordinary text. The act reaffirmed the ban on contracted labor, but made a provision for temporary labor. This allowed laborers to obtain temporary permits because they were inadmissible as immigrants. The waiver program allowed continued recruitment of Mexican agricultural and railroad workers. Legal interpretation on

3431-510: The funds obtained from the increase in duty would be used for: With this bill, the League also hoped to diminish the immigration of people from the poorer countries, who were considered less beneficial for the United States. The National Conference on Immigration, held in New York, proposed to add imbeciles , feeble-minded persons, and epileptics to the excluded classes. Persons of poor physique were more susceptible to diseases because of

3504-465: The head tax to $ 8 per person, and ended the exclusion of Mexican workers from the head tax. Almost immediately, the provisions of the law were challenged by southwestern businesses. US entry into World War I , a few months after the law's passage, prompted a waiver of the act's provisions on Mexican agricultural workers. It was soon extended to include Mexicans working in the mining and railroad industries; these exemptions continued through 1921. The act

3577-504: The idea in his first address but the resulting proposal was defeated in 1903. A literacy test was included in a US Senate immigration bill of 1906, but the House of Representatives did not agree to this, and the test was dropped in the conference committee finalizing what became the Immigration Act of 1907 . Literacy was introduced again in 1912 and though it passed, it was vetoed by President William Howard Taft . By 1915, yet another bill with

3650-405: The immigration code until passage of the Immigration Act of 1990 . Footnotes Citations Immigration Restriction League The Immigration Restriction League was an American nativist and anti-immigration organization founded by Charles Warren , Robert DeCourcy Ward , and Prescott F. Hall in 1894. According to Erika Lee , in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of

3723-506: 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

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3796-468: The landing of "undesirable aliens". It was a law that would allow deportation of immigrants who entered the United States in violation of law and those becoming public charges from causes arising prior to their landing. Furthermore, it stated that the company that provided the transportation of such individuals would pay half the cost of their removal to the port of deportation. The IRL made common cause with blue collar workers in labor unions in advocating

3869-449: The late 1910s had improved dramatically in southern and Eastern Europe. External links: 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 the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as

3942-716: The list of excluded immigrants in the Immigration Act of 1907 . Anxiety over the fragmentation of American cultural identity led to many laws aimed at stemming the " Yellow Peril ," the perceived threat of Asian societies replacing the American identity. Laws restricting Asian immigration to the United States had first appeared in California as state laws. With the enactment of the Naturalization Act of 1870 , which denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants and forbade all Chinese women, exclusionary policies moved into

4015-420: 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

4088-498: 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

4161-752: 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

4234-535: 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

4307-765: 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

4380-578: The terms "mentally defective" and "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" effectively included a ban on homosexual immigrants who admitted their sexual orientation. One section of the law designated an "Asiatic Barred Zone" from which people could not immigrate, including much of Asia and the Pacific Islands . The zone, defined through longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, excluded immigrants from China , British India , Afghanistan , Arabia , Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand),

4453-479: 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

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4526-418: The unsanitary places where they lived. The Bill also demanded an extension of fines to steamship companies for bringing imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, insane persons or epileptics into the US. Previously, transportation companies were only asked to exercise care not to transport illegal immigrants into the United States when returning home from Europe. This bill ordered transportation companies to prevent

4599-477: 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

4672-522: 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

4745-604: 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 the Shang dynasty in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations, inscribed on bones, recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of

4818-471: 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

4891-811: Was founded in Boston, and soon had branches in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. It attracted hundreds of prominent scholars and philanthropists and other establishment figures, mostly from the New England social and academic elite. An umbrella group, the National Association of Immigration Restriction Leagues was created in 1896, and one of the founders of the original League, Prescott F. Hall , served as its general secretary from 1896 until his death in 1921. The League used books, pamphlets, meetings, and numerous newspaper and journal articles to promote their campaign of anti-immigration and eugenics. As

4964-542: 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

5037-547: Was modified by the Immigration Act of 1924 , which imposed general quotas on the Eastern Hemisphere and extended the Asiatic Barred Zone to Japan. During World War II , the US modified the immigration acts with quotas for their allies in China and the Philippines. The Luce–Celler Act of 1946 ended discrimination against Asian Indians and Filipinos , who were accorded the right to naturalization, and allowed

5110-588: 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 the origin of the alphabet. Many classical scholars, such as historian Ignace Gelb , credit the Ancient Greeks for creating

5183-530: 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

5256-581: 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; 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

5329-676: 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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