5.4 Interpretation in a Historical Approach to Reading

Abstract

Comparative testing of reading skills in different countries assume that these skills depend on school systems but do not question the concept of literacy, regarded as an invariant. Similarly, comparing literacy rates throughout history would only make sense if the reading skills definition didn’t change over time. These two assumptions have been challenged by recent surveys on literacy, illiteracy and history of reading. The question is how to assess a population literacy skills whereas the aims, values and social practices of reading change in time and space? Current definitions of literacy aren’t relevant to understand the history of reading methods and debates about them. They should rather be reinterpreted according to their historical meaning. When and why did significance of literacy shift? In order to address this question, data’s should be interpreted according to a new epistemological and methodological perspective. Success or failure shouldn’t be assessed according to aims set by theoretical discourse or education treaties, but according to goals set by the teachers themselves within their own teaching practices. Analysing textbooks, progressions, exercises and assessments invented by teachers to train their students enables us to reconstruct these practices and their goals. Schools are not merely about mass literacy. Schools are creative change makers of practices and representations as they produce tools and stabilize reading procedures for every new generation.