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This book raises important questions concerning the "shame" of illiteracy. What does it mean to students to be drawn into a world where family and friends cannot follow? Can the same person appear literate and illiterate at the same time? Is literacy, for that matter, an either/or condition? Does it "hurt" to be illiterate in more than one language, more than one culture? To whom can literacy education be a threat instead of a promise?
The chapters in this book confront the unknowable implication of joining literate systems, and carry us toward an understanding that can help literacy practitioners and policy-makers at local, national, and international levels to better understand the issues involved in this important area of work.
"...a well-written and accessible introduction to issues of concern to individuals in elementary and secondary schooling, adult literacy programs, and college developmental skills departments. It promotes an essential cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. The authors reveal a gentle appreciation of the ways in which we take too much for granted. The gentleness, though, enhances the power of the insight." — John Garvey, City University of New York
Part I - Setting the Stage
1. Introduction
Edward M. Jennings and Alan C. Purves
2. Literacy as Culture: Emic and Etic Perspectives
Daniel Wagner
Part II - Literacy from Society's Perspective
3. Literacy, Economic Structures, and Individual and Public Policy Incentives
Douglas M. Windham
4. Literacy and the Politics of Language
Philip Foster
5. The Textual Contract: Literacy as Common Knowledge and Conventional Wisdom
Alan C. Purves
Part III - Literacy from the Individual's Perspective
6. Literacy and Individual Consciousness
F. Nyi Akinnaso
7. Becoming Literate in a Multiethnic Society
Bernardo M. Ferdman
8. Literacy and the Betterment of Individual Life
Donald A. Biggs
Part IV - The Dilemma of the School
9. Literacy in the Elementary Classroom
Sean A. Walmsley
10. Reconstructing the Classroom: Literacy and the Problem of Choice
Lil Brannon
11. Skills That Aren't Basic in a New Conception of Literacy
Catherine E. Snow and David K. Dickinson
Documentation
Index