Growing Up Literate: Learning from Inner-City Families
Educators and makers of social policy should attend to this study. Its findings refute the stereotype, fed by society and the educational system, of "disadvantaged" inner-city children as only marginally capable of mastering depersonalized reading and writing "skills," and also the popular wisdom that makes the assumed failure of these youngsters too often a self-fulfilling prophecy. These children are growing up literate in spite of the odds. The ethnographic descriptions of these families' daily lives illustrate the children's learning experiences within a caring, literate family environment, which is up against an unsupportive outside world. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred, N.Y.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.