Literacy for the Family: A Family that Reads and Writes Together, Learns Together!

This week I just finished reading Monaghan's really interesting article, Family Literacy in Early 18th-Century Boston: Cotton Mather and His Children. This particular study focused on how the Mather family valued literacy and writing, which was rather rare at the time. In fact, even the slaves in the household were encouraged to develop their reading and writing abilities. Historically, it seems that the teaching of reading and writing were left up to the schools when the children were old enough to attend, especially because some scholars thought that there was a particular age when reading should be introduced. However, interestingly enough, a person was considered literate if he or she could sign a document. Monaghan (1991) also points out that there really is "no standard history of American writing instruction" (p. 344-345).

Mather, "a major figure in the development of American theology," was very adamant about teaching his children reading comprehension and how reading and writing were related (Monaghan, 1991, p. 347). He also owned the largest library in America at the time which consisted of 3,000 volumes. It was reported that when major events (both good and bad) fell upon Mather, he would turn to writing. Mather left behind a vast amount of diaries that tell his families' literary history. Mather's entries included the joyous occasions of the birth of each of his SIXTEEN! children and also wrote to get through the difficult times of the untimely deaths of his first two wives (and several of his children) who fell to smallpox and measles.

I was moved by the previously mentioned fact that Mather could use his diary almost in a therapeutic and consoling way. I wish I was so talented! I think I begin to shut down and obtain writer's block when stress piles on-hence end of the semester!!! Cotton Mather's diaries are an exemplary way to show the "cohesiveness between reading and writing, and the relationship between literacy and life" (Monaghan, 1991, p. 367).