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Using and Abusing Literacy: Nine Vignettes

In the late 1950s, my father ran a program through which the government gave surplus groceries to poor people in two counties of northeast Alabama. While working on my master's degree, I frequently eavesdropped when Dad interviewed applicants. Many had spent over half a day to come only a few blocks to his office, because they could not read the street signs. If those applicants could have read, they would have noticed that in our town east-west streets progressed numerically-First Street, Second Street, and so on-that north-south streets progressed alphabetically-Jefferson Avenue, Keith Avenue, Linwood Boulevard, and so on. But would that skill have made them literate? Not as I understand the concept. To define "literacy" merely as "reading and writing stripped of analysis" sets sights too low. Thus schooled, students arrive for government services faster, but do they know how to govern? I have taught for 31 years in three foreign countries and six states. I began teaching, assuming that nations, at least those that call themselves democracies, teach literacy to enable students to think for themselves, with a long-range goal of everyone's full and equitable participation in the life of the society. Scenes from my career as a teacher suggest that many forces conspire to thwart literacy as I envision it.