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.
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ReplyDeleteJoan Wynne seems to acknowledge a similar issue in her article, “We don’t talk right. You ask him,” Chapter 12 of The Skin that We Speak. In the piece, she talks about language bias and what a double bladed sword it is. It stunts the intelligence of the minority that speaks it and, in turn, inhibits the ability of the majority to learn from a culture outside of their own, expanding their horizons. It seems that according to Wynne, the first step for secondary educators to help their students is accept that the language spoken by the “at risk” minority is a valid form of communication because it is the form used by the students. In doing this, the educator must also realize that language bias has no place in the classroom. By taking these steps, we, as educators, can tell these students that they are not completely illiterate; rather, we just want to help them improve on another type of literacy, the literacy of standard English. This is a sort of moral boost. Instead of saying, “You are uneducated and inferior because you talk like you are,” we are only saying “Here is another way to say what you mean.” We as teachers need to completely knock the idea of re-teaching our students to speak out of our heads. We cannot re-wire their speech patterns, only expand them. With this ideology presented to the student, it is possible to relieve some stress and anxiety, thereby helping the student make more progress than otherwise. Students are not thinking they must relearn speech from the ground up, a seemingly impossible and daunting task for anyone. Instead, they are building on what they already use.
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