Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low LiteracyIf asked to identify which children rank lowest in relation to national educational norms, have higher school dropout and absence rates, and more commonly experience learning problems, few of us would know the answer: white, urban Appalachian children. These are the children and grandchildren of Appalachian families who migrated to northern cities in the 1950s to look for work. They make up this largely “invisible” urban group, a minority that represents a significant portion of the urban poor. Literacy researchers have rarely studied urban Appalachians, yet, as Victoria Purcell-Gates demonstrates in Other People’s Words, their often severe literacy problems provide a unique perspective on literacy and the relationship between print and culture. |
Contents
1 | |
1 Nonliterate in an American City | 10 |
2 Jenny and Donnys World | 16 |
3 A World without Print | 40 |
Donny | 66 |
Jenny | 99 |
6 Print Enters the World of Donny and Jenny | 133 |
7 Who Reads and Writes in My World? | 144 |
8 Exclusion and Access | 155 |
9 The Complexities of Culture Language Literacy and Cognition | 179 |
Research Procedures and Stances | 203 |
Notes | 213 |
229 | |
239 | |