Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Introduction: The Pursuit of Literacy
- 1 Literacy, Opportunity, and Economic Change
- 2 Literacy and Illiteracy in Documentary America
- 3 Accumulating Literacy
- 4 “The Power of It”
- 5 The Sacred and the Profane
- 6 The Means of Production
- Conclusion: Literacy in American Lives
- APPENDIX: INTERVIEW SCRIPT
- NOTES
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX
1 - Literacy, Opportunity, and Economic Change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Introduction: The Pursuit of Literacy
- 1 Literacy, Opportunity, and Economic Change
- 2 Literacy and Illiteracy in Documentary America
- 3 Accumulating Literacy
- 4 “The Power of It”
- 5 The Sacred and the Profane
- 6 The Means of Production
- Conclusion: Literacy in American Lives
- APPENDIX: INTERVIEW SCRIPT
- NOTES
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX
Summary
The foundation of national wealth is really people – the human capital represented by their knowledge, skills, organizations, and motivations. Just as the primary assets of a modern corporation leave the workplace each night to go home for dinner, so the income-generating assets of a nation are the knowledge and skills of its workers – not its industrial plants or natural resources. As the economies of developed nations move further into the post-industrial era, human capital plays an ever more important role in their progress. As the society becomes more complex, the amount of education and knowledge needed to make a productive contribution to the economy becomes greater
[Johnson & Packer, 1987, p. 16].With this policy blueprint, called Workforce 2000, the U.S. Department of Labor bluntly exposed the way that literacy ability, corporate profitability, and national productivity have all become entangled. At one time, American workers had value for their capacity to transform raw materials into consumable goods. But by the start of the twenty-first century, they had become the raw material itself. The nature of work in the United States puts a premium on the ability to traffic in symbols generally and in verbal symbols particularly, as print and print-based technologies have penetrated into virtually all aspects of money making. In an information economy, reading and writing serve as input, output, and conduit for producing profit and winning economic advantage.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Literacy in American Lives , pp. 25 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001