Ashley Pence
November 16, 2007
Literacy is an aspect of my everyday life that has ultimately become even more a part of my life with each passing day. This has occurred because there is not one day that goes by that I don’t experience or perform a literacy act. This is something that I never thought of prior to researching literacy. Literacy has changed its definition over the years and we can see that in the expectations that being literate encompasses. The basic components of being literate consist of reading and writing. What some people may be unaware of is when should we become literate? Most responses would be, when you start school. What better place is there to practice literacy than within the walls of a school building. There are thousands of books and many educators that are available and ready to teach you all you need to know. We have this great place lined up for us that is ready and willing to take on the sole responsibility for teaching our kids, as well as ourselves at one point in time, literacy. That may be somewhat
facetious, but in all honesty that is the thought that many people have about literacy skills. The school system is an excellent place to expand on literacy, but it is not the only place. Literacy has to be taught and practiced outside of the school system. If literacy is not practiced elsewhere then everytime our child did not succeed we could simply blame the school for not doing their job. That’s a great diversion technique, but in the end you will realize that it all falls
back on the family cultural environment in which literacy should be taught as well. The idea of my research question is how exactly does the family culture affect our gain in literacy?
I found myself interested in several topics upon choosing what to do my research on. I began with how the effects of socio-economic status play a role in literacy. This was an interesting topic to me, but it was a little too broad and there was no way to answer that question effectively. It was more feasible to look into the family culture as a whole rather than socio-economic status alone. I did however include socio-economic status’ role in the families view on literacy as one of my foundation questions. My other foundation questions were chosen based on the roles they play in family culture and how that family culture deals with literacy. Another foundation question I chose to include was how have family culture and it’s dealings with literacy changed over generations? I felt that this was an important question to include because of my personal experience with a generation gap within my own family and how they have dealt with literacy. I realized
that I had included questions that dealt with how the family views literacy and what may effect that, but I had left out what the family should do in order to promote literacy in the home. That is when I decided to choose a foundation question that asked, what are literacy practices?
Searching:
We can see that throughout the years literacy has changed and the generational gap that affects literate versus illiterate individuals is a key factor. This appears to be a leading role in how family culture affects the literacy of an individual growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s versus someone who is growing up in todays society. In eariler society’s you were considered literate if you could sign your name and read a simple message. (Guzzetti, 2002) Very few individuals possessed
basic literacy skills, because reading and writing were not necessary in early industrial and agricultural occupations. (Costa, 1988) This generations goals were to teach their children how to farm, cook and clean to take care of the family. We can’t forget the mind set of many in the older generations who believe that girls should be the ones
reading and writing while the boys should be doing the hunting and hard labor. Many in this generation felt that literate practices are God-given attributes of women’s “nature,” it describes how literate interactions provide contexts in which a woman can negotiate her social, religious, and cultural identity. (Puckett,1992) Men’s identities are not linked to these literate practices, creating minimal or non-literate behavior. These cultural constructs of literacy affect
both men’s and women’s behavior in classroom, workplace, or other social interactions. (Puckett, 1992)
Over the next several years, including the early 60’s, scholars were describing literacy by grade level completed. If you had completed 4 or 5 years of school and then dropped out, you were still literate even if you could not read and write. However within that time frame scholars changed their outlook and decided that adults were deemed literate if they were reading at a twelfth grade level. (Guzzetti, 2002) The basic or conventional definition of literacy involved the
ability to read written text, this definition did not say anything about understanding those words. (Roman, 2004) As literacy made its way into today’s current society we see a major shift in how literacy is viewed by the family. There is still the occasional family that only wants their child to work and does not place an emphasis on literacy, but most of that has evolved. That notion has evolved into wanting better for their child than what they had. I can relate to that notion because I see where my grandparents came from. They were
young children in the 1930’s and were not required to graduate from high school in order to obtain status. It was accepted that they drop out of school and get a job to take care of their family members younger than them. No one ever thought twice about cultivating their literacy in the home. As for my mother, the next generation, she graduated from high school and continued on to vocational school to obtain a certificate in secretarial studies. This was good enough for
her, but when it came time for her children and their education, we had to go further and do better. My oldest sister obtained a bachelor’s degree and my other sister obtained her bachelor’s degree and is now getting her masters. Now I am obtaining my bachelor’s degree and will
continue on to obtain my master’s. This is the continuing cycle of how literacy has changed the view of families throughout the generations. My previous statement about my grandparents appears to be saying that they are illiterate, but that is hardly the case. As they got older they took the initiative to become more literate beyond their 9th and
10th grade education. They performed literacy acts, which I will discuss later, on their own in order to increase their literacy skills.
Although the previous statements regarded willingly giving up literacy for other aspects of life there are cases where generations cannot break the cycle of illiteracy which feeds other problems such as the cycle of poverty. This is known as intergenerational illiteracy.
Intergenerational illiteracy is a sociocultural phenomenon where illiterate parents inadvertently sponsor home conditions that may seriously hinder their children’s reading and writing development which perpetuates the cycle of illiteracy. Intergenerational illiteracy is often seen in high-poverty urban and rural settings where it is not uncommon to see multiple generations of low literacy skills. (Cooter,
2006) Factors that effect the low literacy skills are a lack of good language examples, lack of child-parent interaction and lack of educational print materials. (Cooter, 2006) All of these factors are related to family members having enough time to perform the daily tasks of a parent who fosters literacy in their home.
When we discuss socio-economic status (SES) of the family and how it contributes to literacy we can now see that it is very closely related to the generation cycle as well. As with the changes that generations bring forth, the changes in low SES effect how the family contributes to particular levels of importance such as literacy practices. Poverty is a viscious cycle and one that does not place literacy at the top of
the list. How then can this cycle ever change? We see it everyday in the school system. Children from this background are often not very well served where they are most likely going to be labeled and put into classes where less is expected of them and it is likely that less is offered as well. The parents of these children may not have information, confidence, skills or even the desire to challenge a school system who may be treating a child in such a manor. This is related to various cultural, social and educational factors that influence the parents reasoning or ability. (Commons, Galaz-Fontes,
Morse, 2006) In relation to reading, which is a literacy practice, low-income families produce the most children that exhibit problems in that area. Those reading problems place students at high risk for failure in every other area in their education. This also leads to a high drop-out rate, low literacy and continuous unemployment into adulthood and consequently, perpetuating the cycle of poverty and low
literacy into the next generation. (Graubard, 1991) The cycle of poverty and low literacy does continue for most, but there are those exceptions where regardless of your income level, the family takes charge and puts a stop to it. When there are children from low income levels who exhibit exceptional reading skills as well as other literacy practices, it is all due to the attitude of the family. Those children along with their parents have extremely positive outlooks about their
skills and this is what helps overcome the cycle. The key role in overcoming that cycle begins with the parents. The parent should understand that by helping their child realize the importance of literacy practices is what will break the poverty cycle. This allows their child to lead a better life in the long run versus living for the moment.
What literacy environments are created in these types of homes? It is likely that there will be a lack of resources available to make that child’s environment superior, but if the parent realizes it’s importance, then they will see all the available resources that are free to them. Just one example of this is the local library. Thousands of free books at their disposal and all they have to do is go get them. Although those options are available, when do these parents have time to expose their children to literacy practices such as reading with their child or helping them with their writing skills? This is where an intervention should come into play. Intervention
programs that have been implemented to promote literacy practices for those at risk (low income children, etc.) should include a focus on the beliefs of the parents as well as the child’s. If they believe that their abilities can improve then it is likely that they will. However it is very important to intervene with such assistance prior to a child’s 9th birthday. It has been proven that by this age they have become highly resistant to change and an intervention is not likely to help. (Graubard, 1991)
Now that we have seen two contributing factors that effect that family cultures view on literacy I would like to begin with what these families may or may not do in order to increaseliteracy in the home. As mentioned before, there are practices that we perform in our everyday lives that pertain to our literacy skills. According to author Lauren B. Resnick there are three types of literacy practices in which we use in any given situation where we are interacting with written text. The first of those types is known as useful literacy.
If you are a human being you have at some point in your life performed this type of literacy practice. These can consist of reading instructions or looking at schedules for information. This also includes writing simple notes to a family member to let them know where you are or even writing a grocery list. These types of literacy acts typically follow a guideline and require the reader to follow the author’s plan of action in order to achieve certain tasks. (Graubard, 1991) Useful literacy can be gained through the practice of these actions. It is important to note however that practices that tend to
be more useful are obselete in the school systems. The reading done in school seldom mediates any practical action in the world, and there is hardly ever a chance to work side by side with a more skillful partner toward the goal of gaining this type of practice. This suggests that if we only were taught literate practices in school, we would be less likely to gain the literacy practices that are useful in terms of everyday life. When we do see individuals who are very skilled in these useful practices it is apparent that they obtained those skills
outside of the school with family and friends. Since this is the case families who do not practice literacy in the home or don’t engage their child in those practices will see the adverse effects. (Graubard, 1991)
The next type of literacy Resnick discussed is informational literacy. This form of literacy practice is what we use to obtain information about our world. There is no exact expected response that occurs due to this type of practice. The basis for this type of practice is to gain information and to use it to increase your awareness of a topic. This practice brings forth the occasional discussion of what you have read or if it is an assignment you could be tested over it or be required to write something concerning that information. Whatever the purpose, the main task is to build a mental representation of the situation presented in the text and to relate it to previously acquired knowledge. (Graubard, 1991)Informational literacy is a practice that is widely taught in the schools. That may be the case but the results of the students work based on what they have acquired from their readings are often disregarded after they have been graded for their
task. The teacher is the typical audience, who already knows all the information conveyed, or so we seem to think. For the biggest majority of students they resent the work they do because it is not something that receives any great recognition. This typically results in not wanting to continue a practice such as this elsewhere, especially outside of school. If the parents are not willing or don’t have the time to encourage this type of literacy practice then neither the home or the school is providing enriched oppurtunities to engage in
informational literacy practices.
The third literacy practice is pleasurable literacy. This type of
practice is simply reading for pleasure which results in nothing more than reading something because you want to. For many reading for pleasure is not something that is hard for them to do. However the school systems have taken this type of practice a step further by implementing programs that encourage children to read and to actually want to read. The result of programs such as these are that books that
appear pleasureable to children are made available to them. Children are given oppurtunities throughout their school week to do free reading with no strings attached. (Graubard, 1991) Although some school systems may provide free reading time, there are other schools that have implemented programs such as accelerated reader programs. This program is meant to encourage children to read books of their choice for enjoyment, but in this case there are strings attached such as AR tests. The topic of the effects of accelerated reader programs could be another paper in itself, however it is important to note that because there are tests attached to this program it increases the oppurtunity for students to cheat on such tests by sharing the answers with fellow students. (Pavonetti, Brimmer, Cipielewski, 2002) Therefore what was once looked at as encouraging students to read turns into another grade that only the teacher is concerned with and actually turns children away from reading for pleasure. The key to pleasurable reading is that the reader picks up and puts down a book at their will. In the school system this is not true because for everything we read, there is an expected answer for it which in turn ends up being an informational literacy act. These types of requirements turn the view
of reading for pleasure to reading for informational gain. Although the school system does it’s best to encourage reading for pleasure, without the will and model in a home there is no gain.
Conclusion:
To assume that family culture does not contribute to literacy is a very bold assumption. It has been proven many times and yet again brought into light with this paper that family culture is extremely important in the achievement and succes that one has with literacy. This evidence has shown that what the family believes about the importance of literacy is very closely related to how the child views literacy. The child’s view on literacy ultimately determines their successes in life and as well as a way to end a contributing factors to illiteracy. Family involvement is imperative and low-income families are no
different. They should be viewed as valuable resources rather than “part of the problem”.
The three forms of literacy practices that were discussed are ways in which family culture can play a role in contributing to a child’s literacy. Literacy is no longer nor has it ever been only something that was practiced in school. Although generational gaps have expressed different beliefs on these practices, it is now proven that in order to obtain status in today’s world you must have these literacy skills. Means in which to obtain these skills are now dependent on the home to employ them rather than solely the schools responsibility.
When combined with poverty and individual family beliefs skills such as useful literacy, informational literacy and pleasurable literacy are not being employed. Whether it be for lack of time, money or other resources it is not something that should be excused. What is needed is a commitment to use existing resources in new ways to ensure that literacy is a rule, not an exception.
Resources:
(1991). S. R. Graubard (Ed.), Literacy an overview by 14 experts. The Noonday Press.
Commons, M. L., Galaz-Fontes, J. F., & Morse, S. J. (2006). Leadership, cross-cultural contact, socio-economic status and formal operational reasoning about moral dilemmas among Mexican non-literate adults and high school students. Journal of Moral Education, 35(2), 247-267. Retrieved October 6, 2007, from the ERIC database.
Cooter, K.S. (2006). When mama can’t read: Counteracting
intergenerational literacy. Reading Teacher, 59(7), 698-702.
Retrieved September 20, 2007, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Costa, M. (1988). Adult literacy/illiteracy in the United States. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Guzzetti, B.J. (Ed.). (2002). Literacy in America (Vol. 1). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Pavonetti, L. M., Brimmer, K. M., & Cipielewski, J. F. (2002).
Accelerated reader: What are the lasting effects on the reading habits of middle school students exposed to accelerated reader in elementary grades? Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 46(4), 1-13.
Puckett, A. (1992). Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting; Literacy, the division of labor and identity in a rural appalachian community. Anthropological Quarterly, 65(3). Retrieved September 20, 2007, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Roman, S. P. (2004). Illiteracy and older adults: Individual and societal implications. Educational Gerontology, 79-93. Retrieved October 6, 2007, from the ERIC database.
