A Preface to Literacy: An Inquiry into Pedagogy, Practice, and Progress

Abstract

Henry or William James, Britton has always respected the symbiotic and dynamic mutuality of action/reflection, flights/perchings; and, like Jerome Bruner, he has reinvented his field through intellectual ventures across the board and close scrupulous observation of/interaction with children and young people learning. In the light of such exemplary virtue-moral, intellectual, pedagogical-it is indeed regrettable that Britton's published work should have been the victim of persistently egregious misreading in the USA. As far as I can determine, such misreadings do not derive from the pusillanimous misrepresentations of his British criticsWhitehead, Inglis, or Adams-so much as from direct misunderstanding or incomprehension: many examples spring to mind, two representative cases being the St. Martin's Bibliography and an essay by Burton Hatlen in Thomas Newkirk's Only Connect. Aside from Britton's own work-Language and Learning, The Development of Writing Abilities, and Prospect and Retrospect (ed. Gordon Pradl)-there is no text currently available in the USA that offers a reliable and comprehensive account of his achieve-

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