A review of the past, the present, and the future offers an enlightening view of literacy in America. A 1967 issue of the "Illinois Journal of Education" has articles on phonics, linguistics, spelling, modalities of learning, disadvantaged children, vision screening and vision training, readiness, Montessori, partnerships between business and education and automation and technology. By contrast, the summer 1994 issue of the same journal concentrates on the integration of technology with literacy instruction. The fall issue focuses on whole language, developing writing within an integrated language arts program, developing life-long readers, and a staff development project to improve literacy in an urban school. Many of these topics are not educational issues at all: they are either social, political, economic or religious. Scholars would do well to focus on five issues that have a direct bearing on literacy education today: assessment, whole language, phonics, attacks on public schools and censorship among students. Personal reminiscences and opinions offer insights in these areas. Three important areas in the future are dyslexia, learning disabilities, and attention deficit disorder. The liberal application of these terms to today's school children has resulted in the perception that what is probably an academic or socioeconomic disadvantage is a physical disability. By using the jargon in vogue, scholars shift the source for academic problems away from the schools, away from homes, even away from free will of children, to some kind of mysterious flaw in the human brain. (TB)