"Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a portion of education. It is education. It is at once the ability and the inclination of the mind to find knowledge, to pursue understanding, and, out of knowledge and understanding, not out of received attitudes and values or emotional responses, however "worthy," to make judgments. Literate people are not easy prey. They do know an inference from a statement of fact. They are not easily persuaded by pretended authority. They are attentive to the natural requirements of logic. They can make distinctions, very fine distinctions, and are able both to notice and to examine their own predispositions and even their only presumably 'right emotional responses.' ...

"Literacy is like the kingdom of Heaven. Those who seek it first will find that other things are added unto them. Literacy is not the same as Basic Minimum Competence, but, if we provide an emphasis that seems not to have occurred to the principle-makers, it might indeed be described as the command of the fundamental processes of word and number. The power of number, to be sure, is not usually included in "literacy," but it should be, for it is through the ability to command the techniques both of word and number that we can know and think. There is no other way."

Literacy is not a skill or a collection of skills ...; it is rather a way of the mind, ..., the habit of thinking attention paid in language in the search for understanding. It is the only guarantee of freedom and the essential attribute of knowing and thoughtful people who can choose.

From Chapters 7 & 8 of The Graves of Academe, by Richard Mitchell