The History of Education as the History of Reading

This paper surveys recent studies in the history of reading that historians of education will find useful, given that all education involves some form of reading. It describes the sources that historians of reading use, the models they employ (such as the "Reading Revolution" of the eighteenth century), and the questions they address (such as the influence of gender on reading). Dissenting from the Frankfurt School, Marxism, poststructuralism, semiotics and much feminist criticism, historians of reading have discovered and emphasized the autonomy of the "common reader" and the liberating power of reading. (Contains 29 footnotes.)