ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that a "New Literacy" lies latent and unrealized among the host of different experiments in the teaching of reading and writing. It examines an array of innovations in the teaching and researching of reading and writing, innovations that have made inroads in programs from the primary grades to college composition. The New Literacy is challenging the meaning of literacy and the nature of this work with language; these programs are suggesting above all else that literacy can be worked in another fashion and toward different ends in the classroom. Part of the New Literacy's argument with the schools is that literacy takes its meaning and force from the circumstances in which it is used and the ends to which it is put. The New Literacy is caught up in the play of power and structure in the classroom, as well as in the society at large; it is also the mediating grace between friends sharing a paperback.
