ABSTRACT
Literacy would appear to be one of the few elements of education that everyone agrees to be a necessity of modernity. The capacity to read and write is causally associated with earning a living, achieving expanded horizons of personal enlightenment and enjoyment, maintaining a stable and democratic society, and, historically, with the rise of civilization itself. “Underdeveloped” countries have had reading and writing touted to them as the means of a quantum leap into the future. And in the United States (especially since the 1960’s) illiteracy has been singled out as a root cause of poverty.
