Abstract
Literacy is a plural and ambiguous concept. This paper illuminates historical backgrounds and ideological functions of literacy, focusing on such three traditions of its connotation, as the instrumental, the interactive and the critical. The following three features are taken into consideration. First, etymologically, literacy has been defined by the opposite meaning of oral culture, but through modernization of society and education it was split into basic skills of reading or writing and common knowledge of cultural heritage. It is critical that the word of literacy originally appeared in an educational journal in the late of 19th century. The tradition has been handed over in the conception of "functional literacy." Secondly, three ideal types of literacy are examined. Henry Giroux differentiated literacy to three ideologies, such as instrumental ideology, interactive ideology and reproductive ideology. The instrumental is most popular in education. This ideology has been proclaimed in educational movement of social efficiency and behavior psychology since early days of 20th century, and is now called as "3R's". The interactive has long history of liberal arts education, and has been elaborated by liberal education and of developmental psychology of cognition. The reproductive has insisted political and economical functions of class, race and gender issues in literacy education.
