ABSTRACT
Now and throughout history, language has seemed to us a large part of what makes us human and what distinguishes us from other creatures on earth. Literacy, on the other hand, has played a different role (Gee 2004; Graff 1981a, b; 1987a, b, Goody 1977, 1986; Goody and Watt 1963; Graff and Arnove 1987; Musgrove 1982; Olson 1977; Ong 1982; Pattison 1982; Scribner and Cole 1981). Across history and across various cultures, literacy has seemed to many people what distinguishes one kind of person from another kind of person. Literate people, it is widely believed, are more intelligent, more modern, more moral. Countries with high literacy rates are better developed, more modern, better behaved. Literacy, it is felt, freed some of humanity from a “primitive” state, from an earlier stage of human development. If language is what makes us human, literacy, it seems, is what makes us “civilized.”
