From the person who delivers the mail, to the majority of employees at the grocery store, to the values been forced upon us through the medium of television, radio and newspapers. In the same paragraph Ferdman goes on to say that These social definitions of culture suggest that a person s view of social reality is mediated by collective representation of that reality. In this case, I believe that the collective that he is referring to is the dominate culture which is not objective at all but subjects its citizens including all ethnic groups to its values within that society. On the other hand it could also be referring to an ethnic collective. The problem is that in a multiethnic society and since cultures differ in what they consider to be their texts and in the values they attach to these, they will also differ in what they view as literate behavior.
Literacy has a different meaning when applied to different groups and in different situations.
Or as Ferdman states That same person, in another cultural context, may be classified as being quite literate. He further goes on to state that A new arrival to the United States from a small village in Malaysia, unable to read or write in English and unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet, would not immediately have all the skills required of a literate person in his new country and would in all likelihood be seen in the workplace as functionally illiterate. He goes on to further state that ,at home, this person is a teacher and a wise person. I think that many times this is what happens to immigrant students in a school setting. The teacher s role is then to try to create a culturally literate person representing the cultural values of the dominant society but does or does not take into account that said person is already literate in his own language and culture.