The community in literacy

Depending on context, the term "community" broadly suggests two distinct but deeply intertwined tendencies. Within the literacy field itself, "community" suggests understanding literacy issues, and doing literacy work, in the context of communities rather than as a centrally defined schooling. People in the literacy field often struggle for literacy work as a movement, originating from the grass roots and not centred in government, free from the centralizing controls of a state system. Within the literacy field, "community" suggests that it is most accurate, and most pedagogically useful, to understand literacy and literacy learning in specific sociocultural contexts.

Within a set of broad tendencies in political discourse and government practice since the mid-1970s, "community" suggests reducing the scale and centrality of government, and promoting the involvement of "partners" outside government. Without suggesting that governments have no genuine interest in community definition of programming, it is only reasonable to recognize that motivations are complex. There are many efforts within government to reduce expectations that government can solve problems alone, and in many areas of social and economic policy there is talk and practice of "partnership." In financial terms, from a government perspective, involving "community" may look like a way to reduce costs. In literacy specifically, having community or voluntary organizations as service providers means that literacy workers can be unpaid, or at any rate be paid less than would their counterpart teachers and administrators in the state system. Growth of the state system of education is kept in check. Thus government interest in "community partners" expresses expresses both a skepticism that government can solve problems, and a budgetary interest in keeping the scope of government services in check. "Community" is a cousin to "privatization."

The relations between these two "community" tendencies, understanding literacy as a movement, and understanding that government ought to reduce its responsibility for literacy, are complex and often contradictory. Some relations point back to the earlier discussion in this report concerning whether governments are serious about creating a literate society: if responsibility lies everywhere, governments need not be held responsible. Other relations between the two tendencies point to questions about the forms of programming.