NEW
Library Project
Volume 1, Number 3 - Winter 2003
On the Bookshelf...
by Lesley Fredericks
Other People's Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy, by Victoria
Purcell-Gates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995
In People & Stories / Gente y Cuentos our discussions thrive on the
wisdom participants bring from their own lives. In Other People's Words,
Victoria Purcell-Gates discusses the challenges people face when their
knowledge is not valued.
Purcell-Gates writes about the educational and social struggles of Jenny
and Donny, a mother and son who occupy a misunderstood place in American
society: they are white, urban Appalachians. In the Midwestern city where
Jenny and Donny live, dropout rates for poor white Appalachians approach
75 percent. Purcell-Gates attributes this, in part, to "educators who
cannot, or will not, step out of their ethnocentric world to attempt to
see their students from another perspective." Jenny and Donny are
seen as "deficient" (both culturally and educationally) and
"stupid."
When given an opportunity to learn based on their experience - through
text of their own making, for example - Jenny and Donny prove their wisdom
and potential.
Purcell-Gates endorses school and societal reform. Better recruitment and
training of teachers, less standardized curriculum, more opportunities for
children to come to school with "a full literacy pocketbook,"
and targeted work with adults, she argues, might help us understand,
value, and serve a greater number of people.