Literacy and illiteracy cultures in contemporary Portugal

Abstract

When, by discriminating the male and female populations, we regionalize the rates of literacy in Portugal, the striking contrasts found reproduce the boundary between South and North. Such a boundary characterizes other social and ethnographic phenomena in other countries of West Mediterranean Europe. This fact allows us to estimate how illiteracy in contemporary Portugal has been determined by specific cultural conditions. As a process of «cultural vulgarisation», the teaching to read and write meets better conditions to its development in North than in South Portugal. The type of society, the influence of Catholic Church, the division of social roles according to sex, clearly disadvantageous to women in North, are some of the differences that can be taken into account. The analysis of the elementary system of public education in the second half of the 19^th century just confirmed how socio-cultural factors determined the progress of teaching to read and write in Portugal at the time.