Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

Previously we have discussed how our ‘languages’ must occupy separate spaces. We must be “in two places at the same time 'ovuh dyuh' and here too” as we construct our identities. (Dowdy).

Hicks expands on this notion of identity by examining the ‘whole’ child. She defines literacy as a cultural process and not just a cognitive one. She discusses how theories suggesting children are ‘autonomous reasoners’ who individually in their own minds construct literacy is too narrow an assertion. Instead she defines it as a social process: “Literacies are cultural and material practices shaped by histories, localities, and the persons within them that give form and meaning to children’s lives” (p.16). I think she is correct when she states that children come to school ‘named’ in terms of their literacies that are embedded in their culture. Young children can perceptively articulate how they view themselves as readers, writers and speakers and it is fascinating to listen to them explain why.

Identity is not just our social literacy, it is this and more. Just as we utilize Dowdy’s notion of dual languages, we also occupy hybrid discourses, shifting discourses: Not of language of words, but of socialization, what Hicks terms “a way of being”. Therefore, as the podcast also explained, in all walks of life we see and experience different ways of being. However, in doing so we tend to have social expectations that certain people will behave in a certain way.

Hicks also discusses how gender, race, power and class influence literacy learning and therefore identity. How children view these through the lenses of their upbringing can cause “working class children to experience painful cultural dissonance in middle class classrooms” (p.4). She cleverly illustrates this influence in her discussion of family moments with Jake and Lee Ann were issues of power, gender and rules were evident in their play and arguments and the resolutions offered by the adults. Children then bring this discourse, this ‘way of being’ into the school environment. They have preconceived notions that are embedded in their upbringing about behavior, the role of women and men, and if those same notions apply at school or are they to be left at the classroom door? Here children have to try and navigate a world “saturated with specific cultural meanings, values and forms of knowing” (p.24) that is different from their own. With conflict we often ask the children how can we solve it and give them ownership and develop a ‘way to be’. We expect them to say “I should have told the teacher, walked away or worked it out by talking with each other’. However, more often than not students have a different approach beginning with “my dad told me to” or “in my family we.” Hicks offers Heath’s depiction of the Roadville children as an example of contradictions such as this and the need for shifting discourses. The children’s communities approached storytelling in different ways to their school setting. The teacher did not value spontaneous stories, about real life events. Instead they favored students making up stories from their reading books. However, in Roadville these stories would be seen as lies and bring punishment. (p.25). Clearly this is confusing for students because literacies and values clash. Social discourses have to shift because of shifting power, talk, action and knowledge.

To counteracts these moments, Hicks urges teachers to teach critical literacy: “to strive for critical practices that address the varying diversities they might encounter – those involving relations of ethnicity, race, gender and class”. (p.4). We should offer a curriculum that “embraces listening, watching, feeling, and understanding” (p.13). This task is challenging but crucial: to attempt to ‘read the lives’ of children as they negotiate their hybrid discourses of home, school and places. Above all we should not model autonomy, of singular experiences such as tests and labeling of students. For policy makers this should be their ‘shift’ and ‘way of being’.

Karen Massey-Cerda