ABSTRACT
The value of history has its own history. Called historiodicy, this justification of the study of the past has been an essential practice of historians for almost 3,000 years (Marrou, 1966). Their work has been shouted down, burned up, declared evil, proclaimed prophetic, forgotten, and ignored. It is this marginalization of historical work, especially as it relates to the literacy community, that moves us to sketch briefly several reasons why studying the history of literacy is of value (Moore, Monaghan, & Hartman, 1997).
