ABSTRACT
Literacy, like an ever-changing chameleon camouflaged within different worldviews, is an ever-becoming controversial term. What counts as literacy, who counts, who does the counting, and what it means to be literate has created much debate. The term literacy has been used as a political as well as an economic yardstick of the wealth of a nation. From a Eurocentric perspective, literacy and its Westernized forms have become tied to measures of a “developing nation.” Enormous amounts of resources have been poured into literacy projects. In the end, literacy and the uses to which literacy have been put become highly contested.
