The meaning of literacy and the origins of literacy have been explained by the "literacy hypothesis," and the topic of literacy has been approached from a variety of perspectives by different analysts and theorists. Literacy has always been seen as a source of power. The origins of literacy have long been shrouded in mystery, and those who could read and write were seen as having god-like powers. Writing developed through incremental "inventions" by the Phoenicians and the Greeks to represent the sounds of speech in symbolic form. The development of literacy is seen as closely bound with the emergence and development of the cultural tradition known as "the" western cultural tradition. A series of readings of studies of literacy in different contexts casts light on the origin and development of literacy and its relationship to western culture.
A.R. Fishman offers a discussion of the subject in terms of the Amish community, where reading aloud is a family activity, with the father reading as the rest of the family listens. This might seem to many to be a perfect example of parents who read to their children as a way of getting those children to become readers themselves and to excel in school, but in fact the Amish father does not expect his child to go any further in school than he did himself, to the eighth grade. Literacy is important in the Amish household, but literacy has a specific and somewhat different meaning in that household than it the meaning given it in the western tradition. The subject matter read in the household is carefully controlled and, in terms of the broad range of subject matter possible, is also narrow in focus. Reading aloud as a family is an important socializing process, and the children are introduced and incorporated into the larger adult Amish community through participation in these oral reading activities.
For these children, as Fishman points out, literacy is empowerment within their ...