A digression: The Roman Empire and education

I am interested in reading about the fall of the Roman Empire.  I cant say I'm interested in any other aspect of ole Rome but I am interested in how it fell and how people survived the fall.  

An odd interest perhaps but please read on.  This is a digression from talking about IEP's and dyslexia but I do have a point to make.

Bryan Ward-Perkins' book The Fall of Rome makes a great case for the fall (apparently among the scholarly there is some debate about it) and one of the ways he makes his case is by looking at education.

In ancient Rome, like today, most folks were literate.  They read, they wrote, they made graffiti and so on.  When the Roman system collapsed so did education and literacy.

Did Rome collapse and then there was no educational opportunity (unless you were part of a select few like say a priest in the church)?  Or was there some educational collapse and then the empire went with it? I think Rome collapsed due to various already widely documented reasons. 

Still, how much of a survival mode do folks need to be in before they let go of literacy?  It had to have been some pretty hand-to-mouth living to not be able to teach your kids to read (even if you did it the homeschool way).  I wonder if there are any studies about this subject?

Historically children are often the underdogs of society.  Educating children and the needs of children and families aren't often first on the human species priority list. Or are they?  

In our current society there is a lot of lip service paid toward education by our politicians but only when it looks like it will buy them votes. A lack of action points to a lack of concern by the majority of powerholders (aka: lawmakers).

Margaret Mead saw the lack of value children had in one of the more violently oriented societies she studied (the Mundugumor) and it troubled her.  In contrast the Arapesh people valued children and were also much more peaceful.  It was after those studies she decided to have her own child, so we know it moved her to have studied the different ways these societies lived with children.  She saw what people valued and changed her own life because of it.

Knowing what we (parents) know about how political influences are currently affecting our children's educational process leading to more and more children being either unable to read or reading at a sub-standard level I wonder about where our society is and where it is going.  

Are we collapsing and therefore it is widely accepted to have a lesser degree of overall literacy? 

Is it okay to funnel the majority of our tax dollars into military & other spending to maintain our empire and standard of living?  Yet literacy becomes less and less of an issue? 

This seems like such a step backward and yet I think we have been stepping backward for awhile now and simply not realized it.

Parents unite.  It isn't just our own children we need to be caring about but the quality of education for all children.  After all don't you want your children to grow up and be able to find someone literate to be friends with and perhaps marry one day?  We are all in this together.