ABSTRACT
The New Literacy program stands in marked contrast to the students' work with literacy in other classes and grades, a fact which is not lost on them. Through the efforts of these programs, literacy finds a lively home in the engaging and critical community of the classroom. It operates, in effect, as a critique of literacy in schools. The idea is to foster a new level of consciousness in the pervasiveness of language on the street, in the media, in the schools and the family, which forms the students' home in the world; the New Literacy can make the ways of this language more apparent, vital, and engaging. The social estate of meaning needn't be gregarious or boisterous, and literacy isn't the only manner of communicating by any means. New Literacy programs redefine reading and writing in the schools as the active pursuit of the meaning; participation in this meaning is treated as the right of every student.
