“Jenny described it powerfully to me one day when, after
realizing that her words could be written down and read, she exclaimed, ‘I
never read my own words before! I only copied other people words! I never knew
that I could write my own!”
This quote touched my heart because it captures a moment in
a person’s life as she discovers the joy of learning and of reading. She had
been stereotyped, denied opportunities, and ignored by “educated” people, yet
this quote proves that she has all a person really needs to learn- genuine
satisfaction and joy of discovering new knowledge. As she said repeatedly: “I
never knew…” Her problem wasn’t that she didn’t have the desire to learn, or
that she couldn’t learn, as some may have believed, but simply that her
circumstances and assumptions about her based on stereotypes limited her opportunities
to learn to read.
Literacy knowledge is the concepts children acquire before
formal literacy instruction. One example of non-print literacy knowledge is a
child making the connection that her mother is speaking while reading aloud to
her. An example of print literacy knowledge is a boy seeing a sign and asking
what it says.
Stereotypes interfere with literacy instruction because such
preconceived ideas can cause teachers to
see students in a negative or condescending way and take concerns of
some students and parents less seriously than others. It can also cause
teachers to have lower expectations for certain students, which lowers student
expectations for themselves. Also, allowing a stigma on a certain dialect to exist
in a classroom may cause students to be embarrassed and hinder their
willingness to participate in learning to read aloud.
According to Gates, there is a prevalent attitude among many
of the middle class (including teachers and school administrators) that those
of the lower class have a diminished will to learn, and desire to achieve and
to better their economic condition. This has a powerful negative impact on the
learning of marginalized students because schools and teachers are often less
likely to give equal attention and effort to meeting their needs versus the
needs of a middle or upper-class student.
According to Gates, the language one speaks is the clearest
and most stable marker of class membership, and different forms of language are
invariably spoken my members of the marginalized class, leading to strong
stereotypes associated with some dialects and accents. Also, students might
have trouble learning to read because they are required to drop their native
dialect for “standard English”, putting them far behind their peers. These
factors can greatly narrow educational opportunities for marginalized students.
Some people hold the stereotype that if a person speaks with
a certain accent, they are probably illiterate also. Some may even assume that a person with an
Appalachian dialect is not only illiterate, but also poor and unambitious.
In order to improve literacy instructions, teachers and
schools must hold the belief that poor and marginalized children are capable of
learning, and will learn if given equal opportunities. Secondly, educators must
be willing to accept the language of learners, and not insist that some
students learn to use of different way of speaking as a condition of being
educated. This is unnecessary and it causes students to fall behind. Thirdly,
Educators should be aware of standard oral registers.
I don’t have a strong
feeling about the use of the term “proper English”, but I can understand why
some would argue that it is nonsensical. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have
some trace of an accent or dialect, and everyone uses slang and technically
incorrect and informal grammar in casual conversation.
Citation
Purcell Gates, V. (2002). As soon as she opened her mouth.
In L. Delpit & J.K Dowdy (Eds.), In The skin that we speak: An anthology of
essays on language culture and power. (Print: Anthology)
Tall
Tales of Appalachia
“Well, as a West Virginia farmer might say, that's a load of
fertilizer. Having spent virtually my entire life in West Virginia, I can say
with some authority that the strange, woebegone place called Appalachia and the
hillbillies who inhabit it are a myth -- one devised a century ago to justify
outsiders' condescension and exploitation.”
I picked this quote because
it perfectly captures how I have always felt when I would hear someone make a
negative comment about West Virginians, or when I saw a movie that depicted
West Virginians as dirty, toothless, and living in dirt floor shacks. I have lived
here my whole life, and I very rarely see someone like that. I know there are a
lot of people with a low SES, but poverty is something that exists in every
state, not just West Virginia. The majority of the people I have grown up
around and met in my life from West Virginia are educated, informed, motivated,
and interested in what is going on in the world. That is why I could never
understand where the stereotype of West Virginians as being crude and ignorant
even came from, and why this quote caught my attention.
Citation
J., O. (2003, 5 10). Tall tales of appalachia. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/tall-tales-of-appalachia.html
I chose this image because it graphic art for a horror movie that is about innocent campers who fall victim to evil incest West Virginian mutants. It effectively captures and exploits ungrounded fears and assumptions about incest and violence in West Virginia. I am suprised there wasnt more protest over this movie than the show mentioned in the article Tall Tales of Appalachia.
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