The present mass culture can be characterized by its resistance to meaning or, perhaps more accurately, its resistance to a clear separation between information and meaning. A central goal of literacy education will be to develop minds that can create meaning, not merely become more proficient at processing received information. Faced with the trend toward corporate takeover of culture—begun in earnest in the 1930s and reaching global proportions today—where can educators turn for help in the search for a new literacy that can begin to address the struggle for control of culture that will be a central issue for democratic societies in the years ahead?
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