week 8: schools & language

winter 2014 anthrcul/ling 272

[T]he effects of domination are always exerted through a whole set of specific institutions and mechanisms.
Pierre Bourdieu 1991:50

the three rs revisited

Reading wRiting Representation (of value)

(1): institutions have their own styles of interaction and expectations through which students are evaluated/judged.
(2): deviation from these institutional styles and norms results in negative evaluation.

Case 2: (il)literacy
Literacy = the ability to read and write => institutionally regimented way of interacting Question: How do literacy events socialize participants into knowledge about interrelationships between oral and written language, between knowing something and knowing ways of labeling and displaying it (of representing knowledge)?
Ideas about: World illiteracy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfQEC029caw (public statement): empowerment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5XoolVbIIg

Adult illiteracy in the U.S.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwghwsgZ5AY (CBS): success http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nCfRDCcT4 (ABC): health

Why reading matters (BBC): cognitively enhancinghttp://topdocumentaryfilms.com/why-reading-matters/ (part 1, 6)

Literatenatio n.org
Vision: To empower our nations citizens with the literacy skills needed to thrive in the dynamic, global environment of the 21st century. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= R4KjV0d6HGY

Pictured: CEO, board member, and founding creative director

unesco: literacy for all

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Literacy is a human right and the basis for lifelong learning. It empowers and improves [peoples] quality of life. http://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy-all

interaction & bedtime stories: Heaths research

Roadville: white working class community; ABCs and books as restricted interaction that includes labeling and what-explantions, but with emphasis on facts (conception of fiction as lying)

Trackton: black working class community; imitation and rhyming as focus of interaction, including non-verbal expressivity, and with storytelling as privileged form of expression (though competitive)

Maintown: white middle class community; books as focus of interaction, along with labeling, what-explanations, and decontextualization of book narrative

Heath in sum
Patterns of language use are in accord with and mutually reinforce other cultural patterns.

Factors involved in preparing children for schooloriented, mainstream success are more impactful than differences in formal structures of language, amount of parent-child interaction and the like.
The patterns of interaction between oral and written uses of language are varied and complex, not a simple oral-written dichotomy.

Case 3: bilingualism
Documentary: Speaking in Tongues (2010; 60 min.)

Bilingual schools:
Who are the students? How & what are they taught? What motivates participation in these schools? What policies and attitudes affect these programs? (who values what for what reason(s)?)

conclusion
(1): What kinds of differences do these institutional practices foreground and/or obscure?
Difference: sites, relationships (reservation school, homes, bilingual classrooms) Similarity: national standards, statemandated curricula

(1) Interactional differences

Turn-taking Stories & literacy Language(s)

(2): How do these practices affect the valuing of these differences?

Similarity: technologies of evaluation (reading, writing, tests) Difference: individual concerns, motivations

(2) Scaling difference

Evaluation of performance
Verbal style, literacy

Ideas about communication

Opportunity, success

Concepts of personhood
Citizenship, heritage

epilogue: ideologies of value

At the heart of the relationship between language and social inequality is the idea that some expressions of language are valued more than others in a way that is associated with some people being more valued than others and some ideas expressed by people through language being more valued than others. Susan Philips, 2004:474

appendix b: documentaries
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/free-learn-radicalexperiment-education/
http://speakingintonguesfilm.info/

http://ffh.films.com/id/26961/Being_Myself_Bilingualism _and_Identity.htm