ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses several questions aimed at a broader analysis of the social context of reading. Jeffrey has learned to read because a series of postulated cognitive-psychological mechanisms have been – through maturation or training – sufficiently well developed. The problem of causation in the study of psychological things – like reading – is clearly different from that in the study of physical things. It is more complex, because any psychological "thing" is multiply controlled at a number of different levels of analysis. Harold Stevenson's deep involvement in the arena of child development and social policy has clearly influenced his research. Harold shows teachers the richness of a non-experimental approach in raising interesting questions, the subtlety of "interpretation" of cross-cultural data. The chapter shows that different educational systems have different adaptive value in different cultures – it's more than simply learning to read that operates under cultural constraints.
