ABSTRACT
In the psychology of school learning, there is a confidence in the potential of discourse, the ongoing give and take of formal and informal discussion. The discourse of the school, however, has a so-to-say "silent partner," the school texts and reference books that provide the documentary base for schooling and have become, in a sense, texts that talk. Theories of discourse have to accommodate to these texts and reference materials, allowing them to talk, to have their say. Unlike the give-and-take that characterizes ordinary, conversational discourse, school discourse with a written document may be spectacularly one-sided. Some texts also have a technical dimension intended to enhance understanding of a specialized content domain but which may be a stumbling block for children just learning to read formal discourse. The unsanctioned discourse which does occur in the library may be part of the learning process as much as the formal discourse of the classroom.
