ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a contrast that marks out the necessary reach of the New Literacy. It discusses the New Literacy position on learning to read, encompassing psycholinguistics and whole language, although this often runs to the reading of literature. The New Literacy has always had a different challenge on its hands with the teaching of reading. As the teaching of writing suffered a lack of attention in the curriculum, reading never wanted for support. The bottom-up model leads to reading lessons that exercise the specific skills which will eventually add up to effective reading. The most comprehensive of recent public statements on reading in the United States is Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading. Alexander Smith's forthright challenge to the entire instructional apparatus which has been constructed around the reading lesson has been essentially ignored by the research community.
