AustLit

Burns examines changes in rationale for the universal teaching of reading. She traces different emphases from the 1872 Victorian Education Act that proclaimed literacy as 'a way to the common good' through to the modern education goal of producing a 'functional individual'. Burns argues that teachers, academics and intellectuals have a role to play in reassembling 'the reasons for reading so that here, in the twenty-first century, we may still have the betterment of society and the individual in view.'