Inquiry #5: From the Mouths of Babes

In Victoria Purcell-Gates’s article, she acknowledges the fact that children come to school with some sort of “literacy knowledge.” This is something that I do not think occurs to many teachers. They think of the students coming to them as blank canvases or empty shells. However, these children know things or know that they do not know things. The child’s awareness of what he or she does not know can be built on to create new connections and learn more things. However, as each person differs, it may become increasingly difficult to determine just how much students about literacy and to what extent they know it. How should this be done? A diagnostic test perhaps?

Lack of Experience =/= Lack of Intelligence

Victoria Purcell-Gates' article, "As Soon as she Opened Her Mouth: Issues of Language, Literacy and Power" describes the problem of literacy experience related to learning literacy. If children grow up in a home where literacy is limited, then their understanding of literacy is limited as well, and the degree of understanding is based on the degree of literacy in the home.

My first question in response to this article is this: As middle/high school teachers, how should we be prepared to deal with children who still have not learned literacy? This article seems to be related to grade-school teachers more than secondary school teachers. If students come into our classrooms at 14-17 years old and still have not had the experience with literacy necessary to become good readers who can comprehend large pieces of literature, how are we supposed to deal with that? It seems that it would be very difficult to try to teach someone the skills necessary to keep up in a literature class if they've had experiences like Donny did all of their lives. The only solution I can think of is an enormous amount of supplemental tutoring.

This article actually made me think about possibly going into primary education for the first time in years. I have always considered reading to young children in the home one of the most important responsibilities in raising a child.

Chapter 8 Inquiry

“It is the duty of teachers to guide all students to literacy with equal rigor without ever telling them that the language they speak is wrong,” says Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates. Dr. Purcell-Gates essay in The Skin That We Speak is about students’ literacy being affected by their income levels and the stereotypes they face because of it. She also talks about how the lack of reading and writing in homes leads to illiterate students. She stresses that stereotypes and teacher attitudes towards poor income students have created a major fault in the education system. She strives to inform the reader that students are marked from the beginning as failures and being ignored by their teachers and school leaders.

Dr. Purcell-Gates brings up a great point about education, “With these socio-politically driven attitudes toward the language that people speak, think with, and learn with, is it any wonder that there is a class difference in learning and achievement? She hits it right on the mark! Students from the middle classes and students from low level incomes receive the same education in public schools. Why then do some excel better than others? Is it the fault or stereotype that the teacher displays? Or is it the lack of effort, perseverance, faith, or determination by the student?

Because teachers put such great effort into the success of their students and should never give up on their students, students are expected to put forth the same effort. While I believe that we should do what we can to help students who want to learn to read and write, sometimes there are students who have no motivation. Once a teacher has done all that he/she can do, the rest of the job is left up to the students. I believe that students need to put forth the same amount of perseverance as the teacher does. Without the student cooperation, the attempt would be a waste of time.

Inquiry Chapter 8

In this chapter we Purcell-Gates discuss the idea of judging a person based on their medium of communication. The boy Donnie's mother is not heard because she is illiterate. While we rarely come into contact with illiterate people in America what is Purcell-Gates trying to say about our judgements?

I think the important thing to get out of this chapter is the idea that behind every aspect of mediums of communication there is the idea of human thought trying to come across. It doesn't necessarily mean to be a lesson about dealing with illiterate persons but really about how valid our judgements are in general regarding human beings given the fact that our mediums are complex and often impossible to communicate the thought that lies within our tiny little brains.

Purcell-Gates is guiding us to look past the medium and try to go further than simply meeting each other halfway. The ability to understand others is deep within us all and all it takes is effort to express thought regardless of the medium or even the existence of a medium. We see man communicate with animals all the time yet there is no understood language between all species. Language is just a devised plan to make communication easier but the only other necessity is the will to communicate, the will to look at every human being as a creature of worth and intelligence.

Ch. 8 Inquiry

As Victoria Purcell-Gates references her two-year ethnography of the white Appalachian family, she expounds on what we already have learned. This being poverty and social status strongly influences their speech and writing, and that their intelligence is how others interpret their intelligence.

Her main point that she pushes is that the children/students need experience the people around them using print, reading, and writing. Children who do not have this in their environment (with emphasis on their “pre-formal instruction years”) will naturally fall behind as it does not open their mind to understand the concepts and purposes of “print” that are essential and that are expected of our society. To me, if a child enters school without having these experiences, it will make learning to read and write as difficult as learning a new language.

She encourages that instead of looking at this problem as a cultural “deficit” is should be looked at as a cultural “difference”. Conceiving the problem in this manner is the difference between seeing a child as inexperienced rather than unintelligent.

The concept of experience does not have its problems only at this young age with this problem. We also see it in the work force. It is ironic how much emphasis and importance is placed on experience while in the field of acquiring jobs, a younger inexperienced but educated person will get the job of higher position before a current employee who is more knowledgeable and more experienced in the field. Would it not make logical sense in terms of the company’s success to have the employee with more experience in the higher position? Whereas the younger and new employee has to learn everything about the company, and gain this knowledge only through experience.

The challenge now is how do we as teachers catch up those students who are in need of these “experiences” in order for them to be able to understand the concepts that will come much more easily and naturally to the students that have had them?

Chapter 8 Inquiry

In Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates's essay "...As Soon As She Opened Her Mouth!" , the author addresses the issue of language and literacy discrimination, and the power (or lack of power) held based on literacy level.

Dr. Purcell-Gates talks most specifically about a boy named Donny, who gets to second grade and cannot read or write beyond his own name. Neither of his parents can read or write either, and we learn that they both dropped out of school in 7th grade. Donny's mother recognized that her son's inability to read and write was leading him down the same path, and she fought for the school to help her son learn better so he could make a better future for himself as a literate citizen. However, because of her illiteracy she was written off as ignorant, and her concerns were unaddressed. It stunned me that his teachers had no concern for whether or not he ever learned to read.

I thought that this probably wouldn't be too much of an issue for me as a teacher, because it's unlikely that I would get a student in my classroom who doesn't know how to read or write. However, Donny's parents made it all the way to 7th grade and still didn't know how to read or write. So that left me wondering, how do you encourage a student who has never learned to read? As teachers, we have a social responsibility to invest in our students for their academic success, but if no one else has done that before middle school, where do we begin? We talked in class last week about being step focused, and pushing students who are behind to their next step, not necessarily to where the school or state says they need to be. It's sad to think that a student would be pushed along to middle school without someone really teaching him to read, but it happens, and we have to be prepared to deal with that.

Chapter 8 Inquiry

In chapter 8 of Lisa Delpit’s The Skin That We Speak, Purcell-Gates addresses the issue of language discrimination. She describes the situation, but notes, “this reality continues despite what appears to be clear identification of the problem and billions of dollars spent by national governments and internal agencies.” So if the problem has already been identified then what can we do to fix it?

According to Gates, many children start school with some “literacy knowledge” which is usually acquired at home through interaction with family members who are literate. The experiences children have with language are directly connected to their culture. Gates questions whether teachers can observe these differences without believing these children are unable to learn or are incompetent. She recognizes that, “whether or not we interpret differences among children—or adults—as deficit or difference depends primarily on our preconceptions, attitudes toward, and stereotypes we hold toward the individual children’s communities and cultures.”

Our attitudes are sociopolitically driven towards language, and that is something we must learn to identify and examine in ourselves if we are to change the way we teach. In addition “teachers and schools must accept, believe, and act upon the belief that children of poverty are learners have been learning since birth, are ready to learn at anytime, and will learn.” Gates believes if we accept and promote this idea, we will turn the focus from the child that is not learning to the teacher’s instruction.

Most of us are planning to teach secondary education, which means that by the time our students reach high school they should already know how to read and write. So if for some reason we encounter a student who lacks these abilities, how can we help them without putting the rest of the class behind? How would you handle a situation like this? If a student had made it that far without learning, then what can we do to help them catch up?

Victoria Purcell-Gates’s essay in Lisa Delpit’s The Skin That We Speak discusses the relationship between class, language, and literacy. Purcell-Gates explains that when children enter their first day of school the children bring some sort of “literacy knowledge” with them, whether their knowledge is vast or not. This “literacy knowledge” comes from the child’s experience. Donny, one of the students from Purcell-Gates’s study, was from Appalachian parents whom could neither read nor write, and therefore Donny struggled to grasp the concepts of written communication. Purcell-Gates explains that this is no fault of the child or the parents, but only the result of his lack of experience and exposure with written language. Purcell-Gates suggests that educators view children like Donny as having cultural differences and not as deficit. When an educator views a child as deficit, “it easier to write him off” and claim the student is not capable. Instead, Purcell-Gates believes we should consider the student’s “difference” which will cause the educator to reflect on the student’s experience.

Purcell-Gates provides a list of three things teachers can do to help. First, the teacher must “accept, believe, and act” that “children of poverty are learners, have been learning since birth, are ready to learn at anytime, and will learn.” Purcell-Gates believes that when teachers follow this belief the teachers will reflect on their instruction methods rather than “shrugging off” a child’s future. Second, Purcell-Gates says it is important to accept the child’s language as the language that the child can begin learning with. Third, teachers must realize that students will use the appropriate language for the appropriate social context if it is known. This concept applies to written language as well.

After reading this essay, I wondered where does this leave us as secondary education teachers? This article primarily focused on younger children, and the article says that both Jenny and her husband dropped out of school in 7th grade due to their illiteracy. How can we help these students by the time they reach us? Obviously, we should refuse to let the child fail, but how do we go about doing that? How do we help keep these students from dropping out? Especially if this student is in a classroom with other students whose performances are fine.

Chapter 8 Inquiry

Victoria Purcell-Gates's essay, "'... As Soon As She Opened Her Mouth!': Issues of Language, Literacy, and Power," is an argument for the education of those students with dialects marked as incompetent. Through the story of a young Appalachian boy, Donny, and his mother, Jenny, and Purcell-Gates's own experiences, she conveys that such dialects do not mean a student cannot learn.

Purcell-Gates believes these students are not given the chance to learn; these students are permitted to fail. They come from homes where there is little literacy experience. In Donny's case, because both of his parents cannot read, he, too, cannot read. Donny has not grown up observing and listening to fluency in the English language. He cannot comprehend the connections between how he sounds and how the phonetics of a word sound, just like his mother.

This is no fault of Donny's parents; "this is not a deficit theory, nor is it placing the blame on the children, their parents, or their homes." (128) Purcell-Gates gives the reader an example of Phil from either the desert of Palestine or a rural village in Afghanistan. Phil enrolls in drivers ed. Though a fluent speaker of English, Phil fails the exam because he has no experience actually driving a car. He is a product of his experience. If Phil were given the opportunity to have such experiences as stopping, starting, and driving a car, he would have done much better in the class.

Most important in my reading of the essay was the section labeled "What Schools and Teachers Can Do." Purcell-Gates gave the reader two tips: (1) "Teachers and schools must accept, believe, and act upon the belief that the children of poverty are learners, have been learning since birth, are ready to learn at anytime, and will learn," and (2) "it is necessary to accept their language as that with which they learn, and use that language to help them begin their education."

My question after read this essay are these: I plan to teach English at the 8th grade level. Should a student enter my class who has routinely been passed from graded to grade without ever having learned to read, what do I do? How can I possibly catch the student up on a lifetime worth of learning in a year's time? How is such a thing be allowed to happen? Are other programs in existence to aid such students?

inquiry 5

Chapter eight by Victoria Purcell-Gates opened my eyes to see how our society views those who are less fortunate. She mentions that people, even teachers, classify those who are lower class as students who are incapable of learning in the classroom, whereas those students who are considered middle to upper class are capable of learning in the classroom. I know this appears to be an obvious issue, but sometimes what goes on around us is the very thing we are less aware of.

I am aware that society classifies people. We all do it whether we mean to or not, but it never crossed my mind that teachers do it too. I suppose it is common sense because teachers are people too, but a teacher is also suppose to be a neutral ground and safe place to rely on. I believe that as future educators we MUST strive to eliminate this idea that teachers classify their students. I want my students to know I have confidence in each of them, and that I do not care how much money their parents have or do not have. I want to help those who are struggling to find a balance to learn how to read and write.

It is important that we recognize that some students just do not have the means at home to practice reading and writing. That is where our job becomes important. We have the means to be creative and give students books to read and to encourage our students writing. We have the ability to introduce students to different genres, and we can show our students how to have fun writing. I strongly believe that is one major aspect of our job we MUST NOT ignore. Just because a student does not have this prior knowledge, does not mean he/she is incapable of learning new genres and styles of writing. Therefore, we should not label these students as such.

Even though we should not label students, is it possible to remain neutral? It’s not fair to the entire class to hold back for another student, so what do we do? How do we balance helping each student so everyone increases his/her knowledge, even though each student is on a different level? Is it possible to reach the stars or do you have to settle and realize some stars need a little a more gas than others?