RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

It is interesting that on the surface Jake had the background to become a fluent reader. He was read to regularly, his family valued and modeled literacy skills, and he had access to literary materials. He should have been well equipped to be successful in the classroom. Hick’s seems to again blame the curriculum for moving so quickly that Jake is left behind and overwhelmed. Both Jack and Laurie began tuning out when the material became too difficult for them to follow. Both retreated into their own worlds, Laurie camouflaged by good girl behavior, and Jake into his fantasies and hobbies at home. I have never thought of this behavior as defensive, but it makes sense that passivity is less risky for students than engagement. Hick’s says that, “Resistance and tuning out became a safer route than giving up his passions and identities and perhaps the comfort of more familiar knowledge.” But is Jake really being asked to give up who he is? At seven does he really know who he is anyway? Isn’t the purpose of school to expose children to other ways of being and knowing (to borrow Hick’s phrase), so they can decide who and what they will become as adults? It seems these children must be able to not only code switch, but move freely between the discourses of home and school.
Hicks also points out the subtle differences in the types of literacy practiced at home and at school as another part of the difficulty Jake encounters in adapting to the discourse of school. At home, Jake was able to exercise choice. The activities he engaged in had a stated purpose and corresponded to the family’s values. I identified with Jake’s desire to understand the purpose of activities and disengagement when they seemed to him “stupid.” Although Hicks says “Things were not dramatically different for Jake in terms of the connections between the identities he lived within his family and those valued in school.” the men in Jake’s family “…did not bother with practices that were not linked to constructive action or informative learning…” Throughout my school experience I learned a lot of things that never became a part of my daily life (calculus comes to mind). Yet the process of learning is sometimes just as or even more important than the actual learning. Elementary school is the preparation of the mind for critical thinking in later stages of life, when information is more complex and patterns more difficult to identify. If someone had conveyed to Jake that just because information is not immediately used does not make it useless, perhaps he would have been more accepting of tasks that did not produce tangible results.
In some ways Jake’s dad was working against the values of Jake’s school in asserting that Jake didn’t need to go to college (and by assumption the preparation school provides), thus validating Jake’s opinion that the work was purposeless and stupid. As Hick’s says, “The stories voiced about us, by those whom we most love and value, shape our identities in ways more powerful than even the most authoritative institutional system of social regulation.” Jake’s future as a mechanical contractor was secure, regardless of how he did in school. No matter how much time we as teachers spend with students, it is still parents that have the greatest influence over what students will believe and how they will behave. The closeness of their relationships, the time spent together, the sense of belonging and identity family provides, ensures that they have the most impact on a student’s discourse. Perhaps if we truly want to change student’s discourses, we also need to work to change parents’.
At the end of Hick’s research I am still left with the question of how to connect the discourse of working class children with that of school. I see opportunities for improvement in the classroom in making those connections, but the larger issues, like curriculum and pacing, are outside of the regular classroom teacher’s control.
-Rebecca Ashby