The cognitive clarity theory may be stated quite simply and briefly: (1) Learning to read involved applying general intellectual abilities to the task. (2) Reading is usually a silent activity, and there are very few outward signs of what the behavior involves. (3) Children do not know the basic concepts involved in thinking about the tasks of reading and writing. (4) Under reasonably good conditions the child works himself out of the initial state of cognitive confusion into increasing cognitive clarity about the purpose and nature of the skills of literacy. (5) Although the initial stage of literacy acquisition is the most vital one, cognitive clarity continues to develop throughout the later stages of education as new abstract concepts of language are added to the student's undertaking. In a model of the cognitive process of the literacy learner, the learner is assailed simultaneously by three voices: linguistic stimuli, the voice of the school culture, and extraneous stimuli. Applying this model to the data from the Comparative Reading Project, it becomes clear that there are many hazards in the child's linguistic and educational environments which may cumulatively cause the total level of cognitive confusion to become intolerable. (WR)