ABOUT THIS BOOK

A compelling collection by one of the pioneers of revisionist approaches to the history of literacy in North America and Europe, The Labyrinths of Literacy offers original and controversial views on the relation of literacy to society, leading the way for scholars and citizens who are willing to question the importance and function of literacy in the development of society today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Harvey J. Graff is professor of history and humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of many publications, including Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America.

REVIEWS

“Harvey Graff has been exploring and mapping the labyrinths of literacy since the early 1970s. In a steady stream of books, and essays, Graff has been busily ‘deconstrucing’ our conventional conceptions of literacy as a precondition to meaningful reconstruction. . . . In chapters that vary in terms of specific focus, depth and nature of criticism, and explicitness of theoretical and policy orientations, Graff offers his readers a series of compass readings that have led him into—but not necessarily out of—the labyrinth of literacy.”
--Journal of Educational Administration and History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Foreword

Heath, Shirley Brice

Acknowledgments

Introduction to the 1995 Edition

Introduction

Part I.
The Legacies and Contradictions of Literacy

1
Reflections on the History of Literacy: Overview, Critique, and Proposals

Part II.
The Ideologies of Literacy, Past and Present

Introductory Note

2
Literacy Past and Present: Critical Approaches in the Literacy/Society Relationship

3
Literacy and Social Development in North America: On Ideology and History

4
Exaggerated Estimates of Reading and Writing as Means of Education (1867)

Hodgson, W. B.

Part III.
The Social Relations of Literacy

Introductory Note

5
Critical Literacy Versus Cultural Literacy: Reading Signs of the Times?

6
Literacy, Education, and Fertility, Past and Present: A Critical Review

7
On Literacy in the Renaissance: Review and Reflections

8
Literacy in History: Review Essay

9
Respected and Profitable Labour: Literacy, Jobs, and the Working Class in the Nineteeth Century

10
“Pauperism, Misery, and Vice”: Illiteracy and Criminality in the Nineteenth Century

11
Literacy in Literature and in Life: An Early Twentieth-Century Example

12
Literacy, Libraries, Lives: New Social and Cultural Histories

13
On Literacy: Review Essay (1983)

14
National Literacy Campaigns in Historical and Comparative Perspective

Arnove, Robert F.

Part IV.
Ends and Beginnings

15
Whither the History of Literacy? The Future of the Past

16
Literacy, Myths, and Legacies: Lessons from the History of Literacy

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