The Myth of Literacy
The Myth of Literacy promises that if we acquire the basic skills of literacy then we can overcome unemployment, welfare dependency, and begin to reap the benefits of the American Dream. Literacy, according to the myth, is a "discrete set of basic skills" (Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola 352) that, once acquired, are "an easy cure for economic and social and political pain" (355).
Those subscribing to the Myth of Literacy see literacy as both the sign and the cause of progress. Thus, whenever someone does not (or, it seems, cannot) acquire the basic skills of literacy, we wonder what might be wrong with that person. And the illiterate person often agrees with this negative assumption. As Joe Amato describes in Chapter 22, often those who buy into the Myth of Literacy yet are not appropriately literate think themselves to be defective, stupid, or otherwise unfit for the society in which they are marginalized.
This Myth of Literacy ignores the important ways that technologies affect and are affected by the ideologies of those who use (or learn to use) them. The skills involved in literacy development are not without context, and they are not skills that will automatically improve our quality of life. According to Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola, "literacy alone--some set of basic skills--is not what improves people's lives" (353). Too often, we "overlook, if not forget, the economic and social and political structures that work to keep people in their places" (355).
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