Mom Project

It does seem, however, that students rarely explore the possibility that the literacy-equals-success narrative is a faulty or, at the least, an overly generalized myth, even though many scholars have noted this point. Historian Harvey J. Graff, for instance, maintains that connections between schooling and social mobility are not natural ones, and he argues convincingly that actual realities challenge and contradict our assumptions about the inherent connections between literacy and success (264, 340–42, 350). Likewise, in Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self, Robert Yagelski shows that although literacy can lead to possibility, hope, and power, it can also marginalize and disempower people (14). (Poe Alexander, 610)

Clerical work was the largest and fastest growing occupation for women in the 20th century. Like so much employment for women, it offered a mix of gender-defined constraints as well as avenues for economic independence and mobility. As a new information economy created an acute need for typists, stenographers, bookkeepers and other office workers, white, American-born women and, later, immigrant and minority women saw reason to pursue high school and business-college educations. Unlike male clerks of the 19th century, female secretaries in this century had little chance for advancement. However, office work represented a step up from the farm or the factory for women of the working class and served as a respectable occupation from which educated, middle-class women could await or avoid marriage (Anderson, Strom). In a study of clerical work through the first half of the 20th century, Christine Anderson estimated that secretaries might encounter up to 97 different genres in the course of doing dictation or transcription. They routinely had contact with an array of professionals, including lawyers, auditors, tax examiners, and other government overseers (52-53). By 1930, 30% of women office workers used machines other than typewriters (Anderson 76) and, in contemporary offices, clerical workers have often been the first employees to learn to operate CRTs and personal computers and to teachothers how to use them. (Brandt, "Sponsors of Literacy" p. 180)