Well said, or should I say, "written".  Thank you.

  Joanne

Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  To Lonny and All,

I sometimes finish the NY Times the day after I buy it. The review of "The War that Made Amerca" by Virginia Heffernan is just about as critical as Lonny's read of these first episodes of the show. Yet, I can't think of any other serious attempt to tell the story of that first world war on television. I think we will have to accept that this less than sterling docudrama as the best we will see on TV about the 18th century.
The ad for the show, also in the Arts section of the NYT on Wednesday, says it all.
"He was young. He was raw. He was restless. Meet George Washington 20 years before the American Revolution."

I could go into a diatribe about contemporary popular culture, schools, etc. but I won't. Instead I am going to provide you all with a portion of a text that common American farmers were expected to be able to read and understand in 1868.

"The potato"

[previous paragraph describes the potato as native to the table -lands of the Andes.}

"The soil of these table-lands, which are the uplifted beds of an ancient ocean, is generally composed of disintergrated rocks and shells, of the detritus of the mountains, and of vegetable mold, and belongs to the geological formation of the secondary or the tertiary period. It is, therefore, light, porous, and friable, and contains large proportions of sand, lime, and vegetable substances. It is also naturally well drained, though retentive of sufficient moisture, and from its elevated and airy location, is cool and moderately dry."

This is one paragraph from a 19 page essay on the potato in the "Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture of the United States for the Year 1868." These volumes were not generally sold but were mailed out on request of members of Congress, they were minor patronage vessels, to readers all over the country. The printing run in the late 19th century was usually about 100,000 copies per anum. Each state's agricultural college (in VA Blackburg State and Hampton Institute [later replaced by Virginia State University]) also issued annual reports of similar complexity. These reports, remarkable products of state scientific enterprise, talked down to no one. They gave complexly written summaries of recent science, commerce, etc. as it related to agriculture. Farmers who wanted to advance and diversify had to be able to understand and apply what was written in these volumes.

In the 19th century federal and state governments attempted to expand the skills of American farmers by providing them with basic and applied scientific research in written form and seeds, cuttings, etc. In the 20th century these reports at the federal level were replaced with the county agent system (The Agricultural Reports were replaced by the Agricultural Yearbook in I think 1899.) From what I have seen of them, the state ag. school reports remained fairly technical.

The process of inskilling that seemed to occupy the 19th and first half of the 20th century, has been followed by a process of deskilling that has hit many, many industries, even farming. Moreover, the shift in the mode of information in the late 20th century has changed methods of study, expression, even thinking in ways beyond my ability to describe.

These two process: deskilling and the shift in the mode of information from the book to the electronic (and manipulatable) image have changed how history is portrayed and just about every other subject, too.

We face two problems: one is how to understand and describe these changes; the other for those of us say over 50, is to understand our complex emotional reactions to these changes.
I can remember trying to write with my father's steel quill pens, using India ink on onion skin music paper; which is how copiable music scores were produced before Xeroxing came in. (Supply your own memory of the old learning technology here_______________________)

It is a new day. I walk by any Starbuck's in New York City and for every single person reading a book or newspaper, five or more are staring at their laptop's screen.

And those agriculture reports; I bought them up cheap both in Virginia and in California, except for the ones from the 1880s which went for $50 a volume, because decorators loved the printed and painted color illustrations of fruits and vegetables. One book dealer told me that they bought them, cut out the illustrations and framed them, and then threw the remains of the volumes into the trash.

The dangers to a serious understanding of history are out there and popularization on PBS is the least we should fear.

Harold S. Forsythe
Visiting Fellow (2005-2006)
Program in Agrarian Studies
Yale University

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