RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2009)

I cannot begin to express the feelings of déja vu I experienced when I read about Jake. I have a 15 year old son, Raymond. Raymond’s history is so similar to Jake’s, I can hardly stand to read it. Ray is a bright boy, interested and capable in many things. Just not school. As his mother, I looked into the eyes of many teachers who told me my son was doing less…not performing…distracted, disengaged. I worked with my boy. I read to him. I flashed cards. But unless it had to do with something Dad thought was important, or fishing, trucks, keys and locks, or building something, it wasn’t worth doing. Jake’s reaction to symbolic work on paper was precisely what my son did when it came time to write. And it wasn’t only that. Raymond needed to move. He was constantly on the go. We could never take our eyes off him, for fear of what he would be into. So like Jake, Ray did fine in Kindergarten because he was “able to move freely around the classroom, engaging in practices that were closer to encountered practices…at home.” (pg.99) Simply the ability to move about the classroom was approximating his home reality. So when it came time to sit still and work at his seat, Raymond was not happy, finding it hard to sit for so long while unengaged. The only way to engage him was to entice or “woo” him with reflections of boyhood values and social practices lived at home. If it was building something, or fixing something, or making something with his hands, my boy would excel. If it was reading or writing, it was torture to get it done. School work had no value, no excitement factor. Reading projects, or extended projects of any kind were deadweight on my shoulders. I always had to assist and guide him to complete something.
Now I have a 10th grader on my hands. He wouldn’t pick up a book to read to save his life. I read everything he’s assigned in case I have to help him with homework. So far he’s been getting good grades at Middle College, and carrying his own weight. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
My boy’s school experience is why I became a reading teacher. It kills me that my son will never be a joyful reader. I try to tell him what he is missing out on. And he’s read some pretty good books. We have laughed together, and enjoyed many boys’ stories. Actually, our home was filled with books and stories. I am a perennial student and lifelong learner. His father is always studying some manual. Raymond will simply never initiate the reading part. Ever. Because it’s just too hard, and unimportant. Raymond will be who he is. He will find a niche in the world that is exclusively his. Because he has abilities and gifts in areas other than conventional academia.

I liked the way Mike Rose put it in chapter 6. “…there are some things…that are reflected in other working-class lives…information poverty, the limited means of protecting children from family disaster, the predominance of such disaster, the resilience of imagination, the intellectual curiosity and literate enticements that remain hidden from the schools, the feelings of scholastic inadequacy, the disclocations that come from crossing educational boundaries” (page 140). It seemed like Hicks used everything she had in this chapter to vilify her thinking on her research. I think this one thought attributed to Rose sums it up concisely. These are the barriers faced by working class children. As teachers, we can do little to change these things. But we can try to understand where they come from, who they are, and who they want to be. We can help them without hurting if possible. And we can offer unconditional access to our help every single day. Still again, Rose said “To truly educate in America, then, to reach the full sweep of our citizenry, we need to question received perception, shift continually from the standard lens” (page 141). If we endeavor to focus that lens, “what comes into sharper relief are complex individuals who strive not only for cognitive awareness but for social belonging and identity” (page 145). Hegemony? Yes, I see it… hegemony… in the very educational system we claim will change their lives. We must affect some sort of social change, but “change also has to entail a moral shift, a willingness to open oneself up to the possibility of seeing those who differ from us. This is very hard work, but work that lies at the heart of teaching” (page 152). And lastly, “…we can only change the world that we can see” (page 157). I can’t say it any better than that.

Annie Croon