Literature and literacy : the ever-varying constants

In many ways, ‘literature’ and ‘literacy’ have historically been two pillars of the subject called ‘English’. It is arguably because of these two concepts that English has gained its purchase as the central subject in the school curriculum in the English-speaking world. Yet already – only two sentences in – qualification is needed. In referring to ‘literacy’ in this way, I am referring to a range of specific practices to which, if only in retrospect, we have come to give the name ‘literacy’. For, despite its current ubiquity, ‘literacy’ as a term has a relatively short history in English education. It was not used as a term in the seminal 1921 Newbolt Report on ‘the teaching of English in England’ for example. ‘Literacy’ was still a relatively new term in 1921, coming in the late 19th century as a back-formation from the term ‘illiteracy’, which had actually been in currency for over 200 years. It was the other term – ‘literature’ – that, according to Raymond Williams, until the late 19th century, was associated with what today we call ‘literacy’ (the normal adjective associated with ‘literature’ was ‘literate’) (Williams, 2009, pp.46–47).