ABSTRACT
This chapter explains literacy in primary education against a background of literacy in society. The information society is so dominated by literacy that the child's initial meeting with reading takes place long before the start of formal education. German influence from the United States and the very strong influence of the English-speaking world in the aftermath of the Second World War stimulated the growth in the Took and say' method, most particularly in Denmark but also in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries. From a cultural analysis perspective, however, eliminating illiteracy hardly appears to be as simple as these solutions would suggest. The environment of the very young child is of great importance for emergent literacy and thus for primary education in general. Thus the appropriateness of describing the roots of literacy by means of formal surveys analysing the beginnings of formal schooling is somewhat questionable.
