ABSTRACT
This quotation by Freebody and Luke can be extended to other models that are entrenched in education systems. Writing can be substituted in the above passage because it too is not neutral; the way in which people are taught to write and what they write tend to reflect the interests of dominant groups. Several centuries ago, reading and writing were thought of and taught as completely separate skills. A person could read but not write. Today reading and writing are viewed as interconnected and a different literate subject emerges where readers write and writers read. This interconnectedness means that models of writing are directly influenced by the ways in which reading is enacted in schools. It is worth thinking about how reading is practised in schools and how this impacts on writing practices in the formation of the literate subject. The reading practices at schools are also influenced by prescribed curricula. Although the curriculum is a means of social control, the ways in which schools choose to take up its prescriptions fit in with the world view of individual schools. South African schooling is in an interesting position. The fact that South Africa is a society in transition attempting to overhaul a racist segregated past does not mean that the ‘old’ ways, including ‘old’ models of reading can be easily erased. The traces of old practices remain despite the implementation of a new curriculum.1 This is in part because teachers’ professional training and practice are embedded in past ways of thinking. They also speak to ways in which retraining does (or does not) take place. Models of literacy thus exist in tension with one another and it is worthwhile to compare curricular visions of literate subjects, teachers’ understandings of literacy, and the way these are played out in practice when thinking about the construction of the literate subject at the beginning of schooling. It is not possible to describe every reading lesson across the grades; rather specific reading events that are common in the different classrooms are discussed in detail in this chapter.
