ABSTRACT
There are different “ways with printed words” embedded in different social and cultural groups, in different institutions, and in different social practices. Literacy is, in that sense, multiple. Furthermore, literacy viewed in terms of the different sorts of social practices in which it is embedded, is almost always integrally involved with oral language and with ways of acting, interacting, and thinking, and not just reading and writing. In regard to schooling we need to focus on the acquisition of academic sorts of language within specific social practices and not on literacy as a general thing or as only reading and writing. In school, especially as one moves beyond the first couple of years, reading and writing become (or most certainly should be) fully embedded in and integrated with learning, using, and talking about specific content.
