Literacy is the ability to think, as well as know how to acquire knowledge for thinking and communicating. Literacy is more than the acquisition of a specific, predetermined set of skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. Voices in the classroom resound when children use language to represent experience. For children, as for everyone, language is the primary instrument for making sense of the world and a primary way to connect with others. While language is a powerful means of communicating, it goes beyond the mere sharing of ideas and information.
Language evokes histories, emotions, values, issues, knowledge, and inventions.
It is what we share and what sets us apart, one from another. The standards are intended to promote students' capacities to construct meaning in any arena, with others as well as on their own. If students learn to read, write, speak, listen, and view critically, strategically, and creatively, and if they learn to use these arts individually and in groups, they will have the literacy skills they need to discover personal and shared meaning throughout their lives. Concerns about how these standards represent language arts reveal two views about why language arts are essential learning. On the other hand, we want students to discover the inner joy and self-illumination that come with reading great literature and communicating well in speech and writing, and to take these into their adult lives as well.