ABSTRACT
Recurring in Australian educational discourse over the last ten to twenty years have been expressions of anxiety over falling literacy standards. It is notable that the nature of these expressions and the contexts in which they appear closely parallel concerns about ‘literacy crises’ in other advanced industrial nations in North America and Europe-concerns that have formed one of the motifs running through the current volume. We demonstrate later in this chapter that such anxieties over literacy standards are not new in the Australian context; nonetheless, the notion of a ‘literacy crisis’ has achieved a degree of legitimacy, perhaps through persistence alone, resulting in a popular view that all may not be well.
