The lead story in the Globe and Mail Focus & Books section on March 8, 1997, warned readers: "This article is complicated. It delves into disparate ideas. It doesn't seek straightforward answers. It is about simplicity."

The article highlighted the tension between the increasing complexity of our lives and the corresponding drive for simplicity that pervades our culture. It examined several historical, political and economic illustrations. It could just as easily have made its case by looking at literacy.

Literacy has taken its place on the public agenda in North America with a series of simple slogans and simple proposed solutions. It seems like a motherhood issue, and it is -recognizing that even motherhood is no longer simple in this age of genetic engineering.

LAC has always understood literacy as a labyrinth and has attempted to explain some of the complexities in ways that opened paths for teachers, researchers and policy makers without being simplistic. This issue exemplifies our practice. In the Classroom lays out a grid representing two of the different theoretical approaches to literacy, one which sees literacy as a set of skills, the other which sees it as a set of contextualized practices. The two perspectives foreground the ideas that guide most literacy programs anywhere today and the divisions that exist between the two. They represent two world views.

Continued