ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how a discourse of economic utility was evident in UNESCO publications on literacy standards in the 1960s and 1970s. This discourse was concerned with economic progress, and it emphasised the value of measurement, categorisation, and intervention to produce the desired literacy standard. This international focus on measuring and comparing literacy rates between populations provided an impetus to measure literacy skills within schools. The chapter explores three research studies on reading skills in Irish schools that were published in the 1960s and 1970s. It examines how these studies used formal literacy measurement instruments and how their findings were received at official state level. The chapter also examines how Irish reports on adult education portrayed the discovery of “functional illiteracy” in Ireland. The chapter also addresses a discourse of participation that drew from the work of Freire, Street, and other theorists of literacy. This discourse focused attention on the capacity of the illiterate person to participate in their community. This discourse was given material effect in the form of learner-centred literacy programmes, which responded to local and individual need rather than to national economic imperatives.
