Producing Good Citizens - (Composition, Literacy, and Culture) by Amy Wan (Paperback)

About the Book

Recent global security threats, economic instability, and political uncertainty have placed great scrutiny on the requirements for U.S. citizenship. The stipulation of literacy has long been one of these criteria. In Producing Good Citizens, Amy J. Wan examines the historic roots of this phenomenon, looking specifically to the period just before World War I, up until the Great Depression. During this time, the United States witnessed a similar anxiety over the influx of immigrants, economic uncertainty, and global political tensions.Citing numerous literacy theorists, Wan analyzes the correlation of reading and writing skills to larger currents within American society. She shows how early literacy training coincided with the demand for laborers during the rise of mass manufacturing, while also providing an avenue to economic opportunity for immigrants. Kindle eBook Available iPad eBook Nook eBook Available

Book Synopsis

Recent global security threats, economic instability, and political uncertainty have placed great scrutiny on the requirements for U.S. citizenship. The stipulation of literacy has long been one of these criteria. In Producing Good Citizens, Amy J. Wan examines the historic roots of this phenomenon, looking specifically to the period just before World War I, up until the Great Depression. During this time, the United States witnessed a similar anxiety over the influx of immigrants, economic uncertainty, and global political tensions.

Early on, educators bore the brunt of literacy training, while also being charged with producing the right kind of citizens by imparting civic responsibility and a moral code for the workplace and society. Literacy quickly became the credential to gain legal, economic, and cultural status. In her study, Wan defines three distinct pedagogical spaces for literacy training during the 1910s and 1920s: Americanization and citizenship programs sponsored by the federal government, union-sponsored programs, and first year university writing programs. Wan also demonstrates how each literacy program had its own motivation: the federal government desired productive citizens, unions needed educated members to fight for labor reform, and university educators looked to aid social mobility.

Citing numerous literacy theorists, Wan analyzes the correlation of reading and writing skills to larger currents within American society. She shows how early literacy training coincided with the demand for laborers during the rise of mass manufacturing, while also providing an avenue to economic opportunity for immigrants. This fostered a rhetorical link between citizenship, productivity, and patriotism. Wan supplements her analysis with an examination of citizen training books, labor newspapers, factory manuals, policy documents, public deliberations on citizenship and literacy, and other materials from the period to reveal the goal and rationale behind each program.

Wan relates the enduring bond of literacy and citizenship to current times, by demonstrating the use of literacy to mitigate economic inequality, and its lasting value to a productivity-based society. Today, as in the past, educators continue to serve as an integral part of the literacy training and citizen-making process.

Review Quotes

A first-rate work. The topic is timely and Amy J. Wan makes a genuine contribution to composition and writing studies by complicating ideas of citizenship that are floating around the field (the 'ambient awareness' that she notes). Wan has a big and important set of questions that motivates the specificity of her empirical studies.-- "John Trimbur, Emerson College"

A fitting reminder of the ways higher education has served as a training ground for particular kinds of literacy and citizenship. Using archival research from various literacy training sites, Wan shows that historically, literacy has served as a tool to shape citizenship in response to societal shifts, and by treating the actualization of citizenship as the responsibility of the individual, literacy training risks reinforcing rather than mitigating existing legal, economic, and cultural exclusions.-- "Bruce Horner, University of Louisville"

About the Author

Amy J. Wan is assistant professor of English and codirector of the first year writing program at Queens College, City University of New York.