Wartime training increased literacy among the dog faces?

Some degree of literacy can be gained or increased by inductees? This for any/all countries' armed forces during the war? Also, literacy due to more mechanized/technologically enhanced societies would also be increased?

Your thoughts are solicited.

And I can unsoup the above on request.

 

Interesting question! Can only comment on the UK, and not with any real insight! But I suspect that by 1939 the overwhelming majority of recruits were literate. The UK had had full nominal literacy in 1914 and even WW1 appears to have had "little discernible effect on either the possession or use of literacy" (David Vincent, The Modern History of Literacy, 2019). However, "literacy" is a pretty broad term, and frequently used as a polarised opposite to illiteracy: signing your own name on a marriage certificate was used to calculate literacy rates in studies of 19th Century populations, for example.

So the impact of military service on standards of literacy (rather than the percentage of literate recruits) might show a trend. Certainly, "in World War II the military services had conducted extensive literacy programmes that aimed at providing new recruits with reading skills of a functional nature. Soldiers and sailors learned to read using books and other study material about military life." (Namtip Aksornkool, On The Ground: Adventures of Literacy Workers, 2002)
Literacy development, and education generally, was widely encouraged by UK education insitutions which sent out correspndence courses to servicemen and servicewomen, which amongst other things allowed the "barbed wire universities" to function whereby even POWs held by Germany could study for and take British examinations.On a broader level the Army Bureau of Current Affairs was involved in generating political discussion amongst Other Ranks of "what we are fighting for", and the post-war future, in order to raise morale, and were given some credit for the Labour landslide in the General Election of 1945.

 

I have no special expertise and like Pat can only comment about the UK.

Illiteracy, even amongst the working class was not really a problem. My grandparents and their friends/relatives all wrote very well. Indeed even the ones who didn't get any O levels had writing skills as good as my own (many O levels in the 1970s). As far as technologically advanced societies go I think that in 1939 Britain, as the first industrial power, still held a leading position. Society as a whole understood technology well.

As alluded to above, the real change during the war was that conscripts shipped across the world fought alongside and bonded with societal classes they wouldn't have had much contact with as civilians. Not to mention interacting with foreigners.This enabled an exhange of perspectives which indeed led to the 1945 election result.

 

It cannot be assumed that the British soldiers were literate. In the aftermath of WW2 my father spend eighteen months teaching illiterate soldiers to read and write as an NCO in the Army Education Corps.

In the 1980s we had illiterates. It was no bar to promotion. There was a story of a sergeant major thinking that a soldier called Phipps' name started with the letter F.

In 2003 I was a guide to a platoon of Guards recruits on a reality of war tour to Ypres. One of the soldiers was an Australian. We visited the grave of an Australian VC. I instinctively offered him the opportunity to read the man's VC citation. Bad and embarrassing mistake. "Sorry, I cannot do this."
Apparently, it was possible for illiterate soldiers to cheat the Army selection literacy tests.

 

That is really interesting. The OP specifically asked the question about conscripts during wartime. Your experience is about volunteers in peacetime.

Now I have never served but you make me wonder whether in peacetime the British Army actually attracts illiterates in a higher proportion to civil society? Does it offer them a better life?

 

As banter between the services, us 'crabs' (RAF) used to say, "To make WO2 in the Army, you only had to know your surname but to make WO1, you had to be able to spell it".

 

My first anecdote was about National Service (conscripts) WW2 veterans. Literacy in the UK was quite high but WW2 disrupted schooling and literacy fell back in the war years. The RAF and RN did not accept any illiterates so the Army took them. There were roles in the Pioneer Corps for men of low intelligence.

This is from 1948-49
A further check on the Army figures (which constituted a major part of the adult sample) is provided by the proportion of men found by the Directorate of Army Education to be very low in literacy. As already mentioned, this proportion was 2 per cent in 1948-9. But the Army discharges another 2 to 2½ per cent of its intakes, and most of those men score very low on intelligence tests. Were they retained, most of them would probably qualify for Preliminary Education Centres. Thus the recruits of very low literacy in the total Army intakes probably number between 3 and 4 per cent

Reading Ability (1950)

 

US: About 10% of draftees were rejected due to illiteracy. By 1943 illiterate draftees were being taught to read and write prior to attending boot camp, one month of crash schooling. Those who still were rated as being minimally literate were assigned to various manual labor duties while going to school. They were tested each Friday and the ones who exceeded the target goals were transferred to more military duties. Incentives to get out of shoveling mud or snow outdoors were a great encouragement. As this information was relayed "back home" fewer and fewer young men claimed illiteracy at the recruit intake commands. This begs the question "how many claims were actually dodges?"

 

There was still reliance on visuals in manuals as I recall, a lot of the 'right way' and 'wrong way' responses in training manuals used graphics. Something I've noticed in both US and a few German manuals I've seen scattered across the internet.

Gary

 

"US: About 10% of draftees were rejected due to illiteracy. By 1943 illiterate draftees were being taught to read and write prior to attending boot camp, one month of crash schooling."


Prior to Pearl HArbor, illetrate draftees were rejected. Early in 1942, up to 10% of draftees could be illterate; In 1943, the illiterate percentage was reduced to 5% for a few months. Then, the percentage limitation on illetrates was removed entirely.

The education units set up to provide literacy training graduated most students (95%) within two months of entry and went on to regular basic training.

WHR

From the Syracuse University Soldiers Literacy Training Collection listing page: Soldiers Literacy Training Collection An inventory of the collection at Syracuse University

Prior to America's entry into the war on December 7, 1941, recruits unable to pass the Minimum Literacy Test were simply rejected. In early 1942, needing substantially more men, the military ruled that up to 10% of inductees could be illiterate so long as they were deemed "intelligent and trainable." In the winter of 1943 this quota was reduced to 5%, as illiteracy began to cause problems in the field. A few months later, however, both manpower needs abroad and the political consequences at home of excessive rejection of black recruits -- whose literacy rates in the 1940s were far below those of white Americans -- caused the literacy requirement to be dropped entirely.

As a result, and out of necessity, the U.S. Army "embarked on one of the largest programs of basic adult education in human history" (Brandt, p. 487). Through the use of special training units -- well-funded, with qualified teachers, specially-designed course material, and small class sizes -- nearly 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum literacy within two months, a remarkable success rate. These soldiers were then able to go on to the standard basic training. Later research found that many of these men continued their education after leaving the military.