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Literacy and Risk: an Analysis of One Middle-Class Parent’s Taken-Forgranted Understandings of Independence and Freedom

University of Wyoming, USAsmb{at}uwyo.edu

Alexis de Tocquevile (1969: 506) predicted that Americans would be prone to isolation and increasing individualism, ‘which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste; he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself’. While literacy and literacy education in this country do not have a monopoly on Tocquevile’s prophesy, his conclusions do have implications for both early literacy practice and policy. In this article I demonstrate how prevailing literacy practices and ideologies in middle-class school systems both depend on and reinforce notions of personal autonomy and independence that conform to the needs of late-modern capitalism. In order to convince or coerce middle-class parents, teachers, and students to embrace these ideologies of personhood and literacy, there must be some kind of scary ‘Other’ against which the positive image of autonomy and independence is compared – this ‘Other’ is the image of the dependent subject, with all the stereotypical assumptions about class, race, and gender that go along with that in US society. This scary ‘Other’ is conjured up through what I call ‘narratives of risk’ – hypothetical stories about the dangers that may befall children who do not embrace the kinds of literacy practices that their teachers and parents want.

Key Words: governmentality • literacy • risk

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