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Caitlin Bergan
LIS 502
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Literacy as a Discipline and Punishment
As society hurtles further into a technological age of the internet, individuals are
required more and more often to be able to read, write, and interact with written text. On
a daily basis, communication and consumption of information are done in a written
format online. This shift in how information is delivered and consumed assumes that
everyone in society is literate, able to read, write, and comprehend text. Most people with
this ability hardly remark on it, as they do not remember being unable to read or write.
Literacy is a useful way of thought or disciplining the mind to accept concepts. America
has compulsory schools designed to impart this very skill, leading many people think
illiteracy is an impossibility. As Clanchy states in the introduction to his book, From
Memory to Written Record, literacy is unconsciously equated to civilization in the minds
of most Western scholars, and by extrapolation most Westernly educated people also
hold this to be true without realizing it. Clanchy is making the argument in terms of
historians and other scholars looking at records from the Mediaeval era, claiming that
many researchers were examining accounts from that time period and drawing
conclusions based on the perceived social norms of the present, failing to take into
account that literacy was unattainable or even undesirable for most of the population in
that time and culture1.
Similarly, America has a prejudice today against the people who fail to become
literate through its own public schools. They take it for granted that attending school
1
M.T. Clanchy, Introduction to From Memory to Written Record, by M.T. Clanchy (Cambridge: Blackwell
Publishers Inc., 1993), 8-9.

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bestows literacy and those who fail to obtain it have only themselves to blame. In
actuality, many of the people who struggle to gain literacy are those in social and
linguistic minorities, for whom their spoken speech does not match up with Standard
American English. The majority of white Americans speak in dialects that can be easily
written using the rules of Standard English. For them, acquiring literacy is assumed, a
part of their culture, and something they slip fairly easily into as they start school. This
ease of acquisition of such an important skill blinds the majority to the fact that the
system is set up in their favor and their acquisition of literacy, disregarding the needs and
abilities of those from linguistic minorities.
Literacy is a useful way of disciplining the mind and thought, but it is currently
used primarily as a way to punish those who do not posses this skill. Linguistic minorities
do not have to be doomed to illiteracy; the current arrangement of the school system is
what holds them back. Presently, the schools, and by extension American society, fail to
teach them to read and write and then punish them with bad grades, negative feedback,
and inferior jobs and pay for a problem that is their own making. It is socially, politically,
and economically convenient for them to be marginalized by using their illiteracy as an
excuse. In the discussion of what literacy currently means to American society and how
it has tainted our outlook, Clanchy states “The word literacy as it is used today, ‘indexes
an individual’s integration into society; it is the measure of the successful child, of the
employable adult.’ A person who cannot sign his name is consequently now a social
deviant . . .”2 Also “ ‘Ideological assumptions haunt the use of the word “literacy”.
Behind its simple dictionary definition as the quality of being literate lies a morass of
2
M.T. Clanchy, Introduction to From Memory to Written Record, 8.

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cultural assumptions and value judgments.”3 By continuing to provide inadequate
teaching to children of these minorities, American society will produce illiterate “social
deviants” who they can then control through their inability to fully participate against the
majority culture.
It is a demonstrable fact that many minority students do not test as well as
European American students (Holt, 2005).4 Some of this can be linked to socioeconomic
levels of a child’s parents and the neighborhood in which they reside – poorer
communities have lower property taxes and therefore lower budgets for their schools,
leading to teachers who are paid less and fewer and older resources for the children to use
in school. It is also less likely for poorer families to be able to afford to regularly buy
books. Without print resources available in the home, a child is less likely to be ready to
learn to read upon entering kindergarten.
However, beyond just economic issues, culture seems to factor in as well. In their
2005 study, Holt and Smith try to weed out socioeconomic factors in comparing the
achievement rates of different ethnic groups. They found that European American
students still out-preformed their age-mates in African American and Latino families,
even with a statistically created economically “level playing field.” Obviously cultural
factors also have an effect on a child’s ability to gain a level of proficiency considered
acceptable by the greater world. Some of these factors are deeply rooted in the language
children are used to speaking and the manner in which they are accustomed to using
language or hearing it used. This is an example of how the culture a child faces at home
makes them more or less apt to gain literacy. Children who have fully literate parents are
3
M.T. Clanchy, Introduction to From Memory to Written Record, 9.
4
Janet K. Holt and M. Cecil Smith, “Literacy Practices Among Different Ethnic Groups: The Role of
Socioeconomic and Cultural Factors.” Reading Research and Instruction 44: 1-2.

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more likely to be exposed to print culture and be more ready to read by the time they
enter school. But children in homes with a more oral culture come to school with a set of
skills that are impressive but disregarded by the system. 5
Over the last thirty years, some of these factors have been studied concerning the
dialect of African American Vernacular English. This makes it a good example for the
problem at hand. Held as a distinct dialect for years now by scholarly linguists,
sociolinguists have noted that the disparity between white and black acquisition of
literacy skills has much to do with the fact that they are effectively being forced to try to
learn to read a dialect they do not speak. The differences between the African American
Vernacular and Standard American English are significant and systematic.6 Differences
include but are not limited to different verb conjugations, a systematic simplification or
changes of sounds, a finer gradation of tenses, the use of multiple negatives, and a variety
of specialized and highly fluid vocabulary.
Researchers are finding that this distinct dialect that most African Americans use
is part of the reason for the lower literacy rates. One conclusion that researchers often
come to in looking at this is there is a clash between the two dialects, disregarding what a
child has learned so far and not properly acclimating them to the new dialect.7 In effect,
children are expected to suddenly start speaking and understanding a different dialect as
soon they start school. More often than not the teacher speaks something closer to
Standard American English and is expecting the child to start producing speech and
writing in that same dialect. This leads to a difficult situation: children have become
5
Janet K. Holt and M. Cecil Smith, “Literacy Practices Among Different Ethnic Groups,” 1-4.
6
Lisa J. Green, African American English: A Linguistic Introduction (Campbridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 1-163.
7
Carol McDonald Connor and Holly K. Craig, “African American Preschoolers' Language, Emergent
Literacy Skills, and Use of African American English: A Complex Relation,” Journal of Speech, Language,
and Hearing Research 49 (2006), 771-80.

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accustom to using the language in the manner they have heard and grown up with, but in
school, they are told this is wrong, often without a clear explanation of why or what about
it is “wrong.” To the children, obviously the one who is wrong is the teacher, because the
children have been making themselves understood perfectly well for probably three or so
years prior to this.
Another reason why students that speak African American English often do not
do as well has to do with their teachers. Many teachers in not understanding their
students’ dialect choose to send those with the heaviest dialects to speech pathologists or
to put them in classes for children with learning disabilities.8 Speech pathologists are
trained in helping children with a physical difficulty speaking. They help children with
stutters, annunciation problems, and problems organizing their thoughts into words. They
are not trained to teach a child a different dialect. Remedial reading classes tend to hit on
the same problems as the general classroom in refusing to work with the child’s natural
language use to then transfer oral ability to written. Such placements without considering
the child’s dialect and real language abilities has been ruled as discriminatory, as in
Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District
Board which made it to Federal Court in 1977.9 Though the decision was made over
thirty years ago, the precedent is not universally upheld and the education changes that
were suggested to rectify the situation, similar to what is suggested here, has not been
generally adopted.
The disjoint between the two dialects and the prejudice of the education staff can
both help explain the gap in testing results and the feeling that many African American
8
Geneva Smitherman and John Baugh, “The Shot Heard from Ann Arbor: Language Research and Public
Policy in African America,” The Howard Journal of Communications 13 (2006): 11.
9
Geneva Smitherman and John Baugh, “The Shot Heard from Ann Arbor,” 10-11.

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students have in that school does not apply to them and their experience. “(L)anguage
derives from participation in specific communities,”10 and by denying the validity of their
forms of expressions, the majority culture denies the validity of minority cultures. In the
truest sense, the majority culture shuts African Americans out, using literacy and
performance at school as an excuse. The claim is that everyone in the United States in
entitled to a free and equal education, thus giving everyone the same starting point on
equal ground. It is easier to dismiss those that fall behind than to acknowledge that the
system is not giving them a fair start.11
Overall, the students who speak African American English that end up succeeding
are rarer and research is now showing that African Americans who do succeed in school
are the ones that who can learn to shift their dialect. Younger students are found to use
more features of African American English than older students, showing that most
students do eventually pick up on some features of Standard American English. Studies
also show that students who use fewer features of African American English do not
follow the general patterns of the achievement gap. This leads linguists to conclude that
these children learn to shift their dialect in school settings, since when out of school they
still use African American English.12 This ability is not what is taught to students; most
teachers do not explain to their students that the school is asking them to learn a different
way of using language. As pointed out before, they merely correct “bad” usage and
punish the student by assigning them lower grades without addressing the cause of the
10
Donald McCrary, “Represent, Representin’, Representation: The Efficacy of Hybrid Texts in the Writing
Classroom,” Journal of Basic Writing 24: 75.
11
Lydia Mays, “The Cultural Divide of Discourse: Understanding How English-Language Learners’
Primary Discourse Influences Acquisition of Literacy,” The Reading Teacher, 61 (2008): 415-416.
12
Carol McDonald Connor and Holly K. Craig, “African American Preschoolers' Language,” 771-92.

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problem. The students who learn to shift do it most likely without thinking about it, or
least not thinking about it in such specific linguistic terms terms.
Despite the difficulties presented, there are possible solutions and ways of
adjusting current curriculums to help students master print culture instead of setting them
up to fail. Using scaffolding in African American English with very young children can
assist significantly in their acquisition of Standard English.13 In such a program, African
American English would be used for the first few years in texts that mimic the children’s
natural speech patterns in order for them to see the correlation between spoken language
and the written word. Linguists like John Baugh only suggest this method for the first few
years of school – by the end of second grade, most students following this program
should be expected to be reading competently in Standard. Treating the dialect for what it
is and acknowledging that African American children have experience with language
before they enter the classroom can go a long way to actually making the playing field
more level instead of just appearing that way.
Many of the same arguments as have been presented with students who primarily
speak African American English can be applied to students who are learning English as a
second language. The idea that they are expected to come to the classroom with a set of
experiences common only to the majority remains true (Mays, 2008).14 Also true is that
their proficiency in their home language is ignored or devalued, however it has been
shown in multiple studies that there is a strong correlation between level of instruction
and proficiency in the child’s primary language and their facility and proficiency in
acquiring English.15 Literacy transfers through different languages, though studies do
13
Geneva Smitherman and John Baugh, “The Shot Heard from Ann Arbor,” 12.
14
Lydia Mays, “The Cultural Divide of Discourse,” 415-416.
15
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures: Reading Instruction for Young Second-Language Learners,” The
Reading Teacher 58 (2004): 329.

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show that children will transfer skills into English more easily if their home language also
has a primarily phonetic alphabet.16 This means that children learning English from
languages with like Japanese and Chinese where written symbols typically correspond to
words instead of sounds will have a harder time transferring literacy skills than a child
who is learning from a phonetic alphabet like Russian or Hebrew. However, the idea that
written symbols can convey a meaning is an important step in acquiring literacy,
regardless to what form those symbols take.
In Guglielmi’s 2008 longitudinal study of the progress of nearly 3,000 students
who identified themselves as primarily speaking a language other than English, he found
a correlation between proficiency in the first language and proficiency in English.
Students with high proficiency in their home language were more likely to score higher
on standardize tests, to have higher grades, and do better after leaving high school.17
However, not many of these students received consistent formal ESL training, and only
students with a minimum level of perceived literacy in English were allowed to take the
standardized test that Guglielmi pulled most of his data from. The full range of
performance of all students who go into the American school system speaking another
language has not been accurately documented. Neglecting the home language is one way
to limit the children’s ability to become proficient in speaking, reading, and writing in
Standard English.
While scholars agree that it would be ideal to teach full proficiency in the home
language before starting instruction in English, research also suggests that it is possible
16
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures,” 333. R. Sergio Guglielmi, “Native Language Proficiency,
English Literacy, Academic Achievement, and Occupational Attainment in Limit-English-Proficient
Students: A Latent Growth Modeling Perspective, Journal of Education Psychology 100 (2008): 323.
17
R. Sergio Guglielmi, “Native Language Proficiency, English Literacy,” 338.

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for students to successfully learn to read in a second language before the first.18 In order
for that to be possible, however, the child must have a level of spoken proficiency in the
second language similar to what is generally expected of an emergent reader who is a
native speaker. This usually takes more time for an English as a second language student
than a native speaker. This means that ESL students need to be taught to speak and read
English at the level that they are personally at, and not at the level expected for the age as
compared to students who natively speak English. In order for young children to learn to
read English, they first have to speak it at such a level that they can apply that knowledge
to the written form. They should be made familiar with grammar patterns, the English
alphabet, and typical sounds and sound combinations within English all applied to speech
before writing is introduced.19 With a similar solution as suggested for African American
English speaking students, the language in reading materials should mimic natural speech
at first, as this is the form of the language that the children are most familiar with.20 All
this is especially true if the student cannot read in their home language and does not have
literacy skills to transfer to the new language.
Again the discrimination that in place could disappear with simple changes in the
way that teachers deal with English Language Learners, which would greatly increase the
success rates for such students. Making sure that the children have sufficient oral skills in
English or literacy skills in their home language before attempting to teach reading and
writing in English are two huge components in a successful program.21 Another aspect
that should be considered is the teaching of vocabulary and culture. Children from a
different culture struggle to pick up words and ideas that native speakers take for granted.
18
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures,” 329-330.
19
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures,” 331, 333.
20
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures,” 331.
21
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures, 329, 331.

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A concerted effort needs to be made to explain new words and concepts to English
Language Learners at a pace that will not completely overwhelm them.22
Perhaps most importantly, instruction for children learning a new language should
be communicative; students need to have a chance to express themselves and their
experiences in addition to taking in the knowledge provided by the teacher.23
Communication can start in their home language and be increasingly shifted over to
English as the students learn more of their new language. But without having the chance
to verbally explore and respond to their new language, they will not internalize it.
Changes in the teaching style can be as simple as asking open questions (questions that
require a unique answer) rather than closed questions (questions that have a strict right or
wrong answer).24 As writing is introduced, they will gain an additional way to think about
and demonstrate use of their new skills.25 Level appropriateness always has to be a
consideration. It has been shown that truly bilingual students end up with benefits over
their monolingual agemates, but only after full literacy in both languages has been
reached.26
As McCrary says in his article on using vernacular language in the classroom:
If we really believe in cultural multiplicity, if we’re not just making noise
but want to bring the noise, then we have to get serious about what we say
and do with language in our classrooms. Either our student’s lives and
cultures – and language is a central aspect of both – have meaning, or they
don’t. Either students have a right to their own language, or they don’t.
22
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures, 333-4.
23
Angela R. Beckman Anthony, “Output Strategies for English-Language Learners: Theory to Practice,”
The Reading Teacher 61: 473.
24
Angela R. Beckman Anthony, “Output Strategies for English-Language Learners,” 475.
25
Angela R. Beckman Anthony, “Output Strategies for English-Language Learners,” 478-9.
26
Kimberly Lenters, “No Half Measures,” 329.

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Either we’re real multiculturalists or we’re bootleg multiculturalists, and
the bootleg sold in my neighborhood ain’t worth a damn.27
The majority has a choice: to stop trying to contain and punish the minorities with
linguistic differences by truly leveling the playing field, or they can continue to force
minorities into lower paying jobs by claiming that they are not worth the higher ones
without the education that is so valued by society.
It would only take slightly different teaching methods and materials in the first
few years of schooling in order to teach all African American students to shift their
dialect from their home dialect to Standard American English, or to teach students of a
different language to speak English. A few years, and a one time investment is what
stands between American society now and universal literacy. But this would take away
what has proven to be a very effective and ostensibly politically correct method of
oppressing minorities. Is that something that the major can afford to let go of? It is far
more economically and politically convenient to keep those marginalized in their place.
American society is quickly becoming one that relies more and more heavily on
the written word. It would be hard to change the perceived value of literacy. But what can
be changed is who can become literate. It would take a majority a great amount of
bravery to liberate those who had been oppressed by bringing them up to level of
acceptable standards. The battle will be fought and won in the school system, but school
and public libraries have a place in this, by helping to provide literacy to all. Making
materials available in the language of minorities so they can maintain and grow in their
knowledge of their first language is one small boost librarians can give. Providing
programs that help children get ready to learn to read directed at minority cultures also
27
Donald McCrary, “Represent, Representin’, Representation,” 75.

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can be a method of helping to close the achievement gap. These things, and support of
local teachers who successfully work with these linguistic issues, are some of the small
things libraries can do to prevent our beloved literacy from being used as a form of
punishment.

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Works Cited
Anthony, Angela R. Beckman. “Output Strategies for English-Language Learners:
Theory to Practice.” The Reading Teacher 61: 472-82.
Clanchy, M.T. Introduction to From Memory to Written Record, by M.T. Clanchy, 1-16.
Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1993.
Connor, Carol McDonald and Holly K. Craig. “African American Preschoolers'
Language, Emergent Literacy Skills, and Use of African American English: A
Complex Relation.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49
(2006), 771-92.
Green, Lisa J.. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Campbridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Holt, Janet K. and M. Cecil Smith. “Literacy Practices Among Different Ethnic Groups:
The Role of Socioeconomic and Cultural Factors.” Reading Research and
Instruction 44: 1-21.
Lenters, Kimberly “No Half Measures: Reading Instruction for Young Second-Language
Learners,” The Reading Teacher 58 (2004): 329
Mays, Lydia. “The Cultural Divide of Discourse: Understanding How English-Language
Learners’ Primary Discourse Influences Acquisition of Literacy.” The Reading
Teacher 61 (2008): 415-418.
McCrary, Donald. “Represent, Representin’, Representation: The Efficacy of Hybrid
Texts in the Writing Classroom.” Journal of Basic Writing 24: 72-91.
Smitherman, Geneva and John Baugh. “The Shot Heard from Ann Arbor: Language
Research and Public Policy in African America.” The Howard Journal of
Communications 13 (2006): 5-24.