Resnick and Resnick bring to attention the changing standards of literacy by focusing on three major historical changes in literacy. The standard form of literacy during the first historical change (Protestant-religious education) focused on “reading, reviewing, memorizing, and recalling familiar material,” which was usually a prayer book or other religious materials (373). The second historical change was the elite-technical school, which included the development of higher education for the elite (374). The standard of literacy expected from the elite few now included “the development of problem solving capacities” as well as learning “theoretical knowledge” (375). The final historical change was the civic-national schooling. In this change, literacy and education began to be secularized, public schools were established, and teachers were adequately trained to be in teaching positions (378). Unlike the higher education schools, these public schools provided basic instructions in reading, but they mostly promoted “a love of the familiar,” or patriotism (379). America followed a similar trend by beginning with focusing on oral reading and recitation (380). However, the development of standardized testing lead to a supposed scientific method of analyzing literacy (381). The standard of literacy that is expected of today is one that requires being able to read new material and extracting information from that material, which is higher than any standard that literacy was held to before (371).

I do agree with Resnick and Resnick’s final conclusion that returning “back to the basics” will not be a suitable method of teaching literacy to children because of the lack of comprehension and critical problem solving that was missing from the “basics.” But would it be a bad idea to simply change our standards of literacy? For example, would considering “functional literacy” to be a suitable form of literacy to reach instead of a literacy which requires critical thinking and potentially higher education necessarily be detrimental to society or education? Resnick and Resnick agree that applying functional literacy as a standard for literacy would increase literacy in the population. Since literacy higher than a functional form is generally not used in the daily lives of the majority of the population, why should everyone be held to such a high standard of literacy? I think this might be a possible method of diminishing the “illiteracy crisis” that America is facing. If changing the definition of what it means to be literate is out of the question, then how do we ensure the entire population attains this higher standard of literacy and what would be the purpose of reaching mass literacy amongst the population? Furthermore, should people that don’t attain this high literacy level be considered not as beneficial to society?