The pretty irrefutable evidence that literacy is ideological comes from Brian Street, probably the most significant literacy anthropologist. But is is also supportede by the work of Carl Kaestle, Joel Spring, etc. They arguments have not been refuted.

Just for a quick background, Prior to the reformation, Literacy was the patrimony of the church to teach theri perspective of church and gods authority. With the reformation and the challenge of church's authority, literacy is taken to the home so that the head of the family could teach the bible first with the help of the priest. So, the original expansion of literacy in the west was to promote religion. This is the view that is brought into New England by the pilgrims. It was also used to try to inclucate Anglo superiority to the native Americans in New England, to de-Germanize the predominantly German groups in Pennsilvania to prepeare workers to work and leaders to lead.

In fact, the early schools in the colonies don't make any secret of the ideological purpose of the schools. They were to promote obedience to authority and god, to inculcate English, Chrisitan values, to track people to desire professions based on social position and to promote upward mobility of the middle class to challenge the aristorcacy (the rise of the Industrial Revolution). There are other elements promoted in education from its origins in the US to the present, but it was always and it still is ideological.

You can try to teach reading and writing devoid of context. However, print in the world that surround us is not contextless. it ahs a very specific context and most of it says "CONSUME".

There is a wonderful science fiction movie with Rowdy Roddie Pipper called "They Live". Has anyone seen it? If you haven't you must. It is the masterpiece of Literacy.

Anyways, the point it that teaching literacy is teaching people to read the text around us and you have a choice of making people aware that the text is ideologically constructed or not. If you like the predominant ideology, then teach literacy as something neutral and let people become pawns of the text or figure out for themselves that they are being manipulated by them. Or, you can try to teach people that the text has surface meaning and deeper meaning. You don't have to support an ideology but teaching literacy to me is making people aware that ideology is imbedded in the text. The problem with not supporting an ideology is that in that case you are indirectly agreeing with the dominant one. it is like voting blank. That is perfectly fine, but you need to be aware that that is what you are doing.
________________________________
From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov [professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Steve Kaufmann [steve at thelinguist.com]
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 10:21 PM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2898] literacy and social change

Catherine,

Thank you for your very clear presentation of your views.

Yes when we communicate we communicate not only our words but a that
range of psychological, social, political, ethical, developmental, even
spiritual, etc. that make us who we are.

Every society has power relationships and injustices. To some extent
reforming society often just means changes some injustices and power
relationships with others.

I believe we can engage in critical thinking without viewing society in
terms of injustices and power relationships. How about friendship,
knowledge, hospitality, generosity, and yes, interests.

The tolerance for different points of view and different interests is
not part of the world view of the committed ideologue. It was not part
of the world view of the Russian revolutionaries, the de-kulakers, nor
of the Nazis and Fascists, nor of the Red Guards, Pol Pot and Castro.

I am suspicious of ideologues, and what I find here is ideology, the
"irrefutable arguments" that Andres referred to, the 100% literacy and
"critical thinking" in Cuba that one of the posters referred to, the
celebrating of "marginalized literacies" , the notion that "Any notion
of "L" (capital L) Literacy is a social construct, invariably tied to
structures of power and inherently political." And on and on. To me this
is all ideology and phony, devoid of meaning, just like dialectical
Marxism. It is based on arrogance, the arrogance of the intellectual.

I prefer common sense.

Steve
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