In Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy

     “In Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy,” ethnographer Victoria Purcell-Gates presents a case study of a woman named Jenny who was functionally illiterate.  She wants to learn how to read so that she can break the intergenerational cycle of illiteracy that plagues her family.  For example, her son Donny manages to pass the first grade despite the fact that he cannot read at all. Jenny is really alarmed by this situation and consequently she asks the school system to make her son repeat the first grade, but they refuse.  He goes on to the first grade where he ends up lagging farther behind his classmates.

          Indeed it is Purcell-Gates who becomes a literacy sponsor for Jenny and her son, for she provides them with personal tutoring sessions at the local literacy center.  Jenny quickly picks up some words that reflect her environment. In other words, she can read signs and labels that she encounters in everyday life.

          On the other hand, Donny does not embrace reading in the same way that his mother does.  Thus, it is his father, not his mother, who is the bigger influence on his literacy practices.  Since Donny’s father does not read, his son sees little to no value in reader either.  Basically, reading does not fit into their Appalachian lifestyle.  Eventually, through a difficult path, Purcell-Gates is able to change Donny’s attitude about reading.

          Purcell-Gates study fits in with the larger concept of how socio-cultural factors influence language learning.  Her study fits in nicely with the other ethnographic study we have read this semester: Shirley Brice Heath’s “Ways with Words.”  Yet, Purcell-Gates indicts the public school system for allowing children like Donny to slip through the cracks.  Social promotion is a huge problem, and I know that policy-makers have responded to it by using more standardized testing and teacher evaluation as a way to address the fact that some students, particularly low-income, disadvantages, and minority children are low literacy students.  Purcell-Gates writes:

Jenny, Big Donny, Donny, and Timmy are representative of the urban Appalachians who live in poverty in the inner cities. They are members of a cultural minority that has brought its ways of being and of viewing the world from the mountains, where this culture has evolved over many generations. Outside of the mountains, however, their ways have been derided, scorned, and ridiculed. Their mountaineer dialect and accent invite contempt and/or derision from other urban dwellers. They fail to prosper or succeed. They suffer from familial breakdowns, poor health, tragic accidents, and unfulfilled dreams. They are poorly educated and alienated from the school system. They cling to their notion of home in the mountains: there they are real, not caricatures of failure. Along with their kin networks and friends they live in a world apart within their inner city. Escape down the interstate from an unfriendly, non-accepting urban community is essential and near at hand. City life makes no more sense to Jenny than she does to its urban mainstream. (38-39)

Purcell-Gates’ passage speaks to the social and cultural isolation that Jenny and her family have from the larger urban community in which they reside.  Just like today certain segments of the urban population are derided and marginalized, Jenny and her family are part of the white poor which are almost invisible to the mainstream media.

          When you get down to it, we cannot assume that students from these backgrounds come to school with the kind of exposure to language, words, and print that students from middle and upper-class families do.  Children from families with a higher socioeconomic status begin school with an advantage.  The question is how to even the playing field so that every child can have a chance to prosper in our country.  Some states and localities are moving towards universal-Pre K, but it has met resistance from some circles because of the cost associated with funding such programs. Others argue that some educators use the myth of helplessness instead of being accountable for the academic performance of disadvantaged children. 

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