On Being Literate

The changes in our society in the patterns of behaviour, the varieties of culture and language, and the shifting emphasis on the roles of the sexes, have had a dramatic effect on what is going on in schools and classrooms everywhere. At the same time, parents, who have always been responsible for the early education of their children are now urged to take an active role in their schooling, they are inevitably confused by the unfamiliarity of the current school scence. At the heart of it all is their concern about literacy; children learning to read and write in a society which seems increasingly to be dominated by electronic media.