War & Peace Quote by Hugh Mackay

“Rearguard action” is doing a lot of work here: Mackay frames universal literacy not as a settled civic achievement but as a battlefield position already being lost. The phrase borrows the language of retreat, suggesting that educators and policymakers may be clinging to literacy the way an army clings to a strategic hill after the war has moved elsewhere. That choice is deliberately unsettling. It implies that the comforting rhetoric of “back to basics” might be less a plan than a panic response.

The provocation is in the pivot: defend literacy, or be “bold enough” to name the cultural shift. Mackay isn’t arguing against literacy; he’s warning that treating it as the singular, organizing aim of schooling may misread the moment. The subtext: culture is being rewired by screens, platforms, and attention economies that reward speed, vibe, and images over slow, linear comprehension. If so, “universal literacy” becomes both more essential and more fragile - and also insufficient as a standalone metric of an educated person.

He’s also poking at institutional denial. “See what’s actually happening” hints at a gap between how schools imagine knowledge (books, essays, standardized proficiency) and how people now absorb information (feeds, video, AI summaries, influencer-driven narratives). Mackay’s intent is to force a choice: keep fighting yesterday’s war in the name of virtue, or redesign educational goals to match a culture where literacy may need to expand into critical media fluency, sustained attention, and the ability to interrogate persuasion itself.