The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Co-written with Sagan's wife, documentarian Ann Druyan, this chapter opens with a story from the life of Frederick Douglass. As a young enslaved man in Maryland in the 1820s, Douglass discreetly taught himself to read using the books of his enslaver Captain Hugh Auld, after realizing the connection “between the letters on the page and the movement of the reader’s lips” (356). Once Douglass knew how to read, he taught others, recognizing the oppressive intention behind the antebellum rule of forbidding enslaved people to be literate. Once he escaped to New England, Douglass became a prolific writer and speaker, and achieved a remarkable position in American history through politics and advocacy—all because he recognized the value of literacy.

In evaluating the general literacy rate in the United States, Sagan despairs. Almost 40 million Americans, in 1994, are functionally illiterate. Generally, those with lower literacy rates report lower incomes and are more likely to wind up in prison, though Sagan is quick to caution against finding too much correlation between these latter facts. He suggests several reasons that might hinder people from reading, including lack of access to books when they are younger, malnourishment, or general poverty. Programs that teach reading skills are underfunded as well, though their general efficacy has been proven by several contemporary tests that suggest that children who are read to and are introduced to scholarship perform better than those without this foundation.