An understanding of these earlier periods helps us understand today’s ‘crisis in literacy’ debate. In Renaissance England, for example, many more people could read than could write, and within reading there was a distinction between those who could read print and those who could manage the more difficult task of reading manuscript. These studies argue that literacy can only be understood in its social and technical context. This second position is supported by most of the relevant academic work over the past 20 years. On the other hand, a host of progressives protest that literacy is much more complicated than a simple technical mastery of reading and writing. On the one hand there is an army of people convinced that traditional skills of reading and writing are declining. The debate surrounding literacy is one of the most charged in education. Are the electronic media exacerbating illiteracy and making our children stupid? On the contrary, says Colin McCabe, they have the potential to make us truly literate.
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