This project is the final assignment for Literacy and Development, a graduate course in International Educational Development. Throughout the fall semester I observed literacy in several settings, and kept notes in journals, as well as artifacts of literacy (scanned and attached below). Below is a summary of this project, as it covered my 11-day trip to Ruhiira, Uganda and my experience parenting two children in various stages of literacy--a second grader and a kindergartner. Where possible, I have included video and pictures to illustrate my observations. Ruhiira, Uganda I. The school visits Midway through my time in Ruhiira, a small, remote village in Uganda, two friends and I hiked up the mountain to visit three schools. At each school we respectfully visited the headmaster or headmistress first. We sat down at their desk, shook hands, signed their guest book, and talked. The first, a secondary school, all owed us to visit a math class. The next school, a primary school, was having a performance of some sort. When we walked over a small hill we were suddenly in the school courtyard and an older student or young teacher was playing a bugle. Behind him, a troupe of young children danced and played drums. It was so joyful and beautiful to watch. We hesitated a while in that spot, taking in their happy scene before becoming the interrupting 'mizungo' visitors. Before we left, the headmaster asked all the students to sit down. They went through the usual rituals of the beginning of a class or assembly. The headmaster said "how are you?" to which all the students said in unison: "I am fine. How are you?" Then, they sang several beautiful songs for us. II. Mizungos When visiting another country, I like to be able to navigate in the local language, rather than depend on people speaking English. In the event that I cannot learn enough to navigate, I m  Robert taught me the appropriate greetings for women, men, and children, which were most useful the very first night when my host--a local woman who owned a pharmaceuticals shop and lived behind it in the small village--took me around the village to meet her friends and the medical staff I would be shadowing. I greeted everyone as politely as I could, with the formal "Good evening, madame" just as Robert said. They would smile and tell her something that I gathered was to the effect of, "Oh! She learned some of our language!" to which Christine would answer them (again, I inferred her meaning), "No, she just knows how to greet." Then, they would all have a good chuckle. Still, I was grateful I at least knew how to greet, since I was later told very few mizungos even learn that. Mizungo is an odd word, but it was among the first that anyone in our group learned. Everywhere we drove, children would stop their play or work, point and even run after us yelling "Mizungo!" Robert said it means white person, but I gather it's a broader term. The Hopi language characterizes people as either Hopi or aliens, and mizungo felt much more like alien or outsider than white person. One of our group, an Indian graduate student at Teachers College, reflected that it was the first time in her life that she was considered "white" rather than Indian. She tried to explain to her host family that she was not a mizungo, pointing to her skin, but they smiled and said that she was mizungo.  III. Eve Primary school goes to grade seven, and then students change schools and locations to move on to secondary schools. One young girl apparently heard three of us from Columbia were working in her village and she made it her purpose to find all three of us to meet us and talk. Her name was Eve and she was in the 7th grade. I was the last one she found and it was the end of the day. I was sitting on Christine's porch, perched in a perfect spot, near the village water tap, to see and meet everyone I could. The village did not have electricity, so my memory of meeting her uniquely transitions from when she first came up at dusk, to when we finally parted in the very dark night.  She was amazingly brilliant. Her English was better than any other individuals in all of our Uganda trip--including the amazing people we met at UNDP. I felt very maternal toward her and began thinking of her in terms of maximizing her potential. It helps children succeed in the present if they conceptualize their future. For example, if students at the beginning of high school have a clear idea of what they would like to be when they grow up, they tend to go on to college in higher numbers--regardless o  Eve was in that 5-7 grade period where the gradient toward dropping out is steepest, especially for girls. Her story was tragic for its absolute commonness. By day in the clinic I had seen so many emergent births, and many of them were in girls just a year or two older than Eve who had been bright school girls like her just before something happened in their lives to make them drop out. The schools aren't supposed to have fees, by Ugandan law, but they get around it in myriad ways. The fees and the opportunity cost of a girl's labor at home and/or employment pay combine to pressure parents to remove them from school. Aidan I. Aidan's teacher Aidan's first report card in his new school came home with a 3 in reading. 3 means meets grade level and 4 means exceeds. Aidan reads on at least a sixth grade level. The books in his classroom are marked by alphabet letter and they top out at "R" with small chapter books like Jack and Annie, which he was reading easily two years ago. He has been begging us to donate books to the classroom to make an "S" section that interests him. When we saw the report card we were incensed. I wrote a letter to his teacher communicating our confusion and she very quickly scheduled a meeting for us with the school's head principle. This is our second year in New York public schools, but one thing we learned quickly is how very hard it is to ever meet with a head principle. Parents' concerns are quickly distributed to one of many assistant principles, who specialize in assuaging parents as opposed to solving their problems. We were a little startled that we had so quickly gotten a meeting with the principle. In the meeting, the principle quickly got to the point. The school has had a long-standing policy of not giving kids too many 4s during the school year, for fear that they will not see that they need to keep improving. She said that she was a child like our Aidan that was motivated by accomplishment and would have been personally crushed if, after doing her best and accomplishing something beyond the classroom standards, she was given a 3. She wants to change the policy and is eager to get input from parents that support her change. We were eager to get on board supporting her. II. The publishing party Aidan's school had a publishing party to celebrate their book-making projects. They invited other classes to come in and comment on each student's book. Parents were also welcome to come. There were refreshments for everyone. The book production process was more of a group exercise than a measurable outcome. Weeks were spent on collaborative books, and most of the time was apparently spent arguing about what the books would entail. The boys in this class, including our Aidan, are obsessed at the moment with daily productions of Monster Comics. But this project was on the topic of boa constrictors, which was only interesting for a few nights of home research on the computer. I hope he learned about the process of researching and building a project for an outcome, but I fear it was too protracted to connect experience to learning for his little second grade head. By comparison, last year Aidan did a book publishing project at home, with very different results. III. Robinson Crusoe A few years ago I began buying books from the Great Illustrated Classics series. The series abridges longer, adult classic books and simplifies the plot a little. Bauer and Wise explain the value of this in their book, The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (1999). The authors explain their home reading curriculum has a focus on avoiding anything resembling text books for reading because they "mutilate real books by pulling sections out of context and presenting them as 'assignments'," which is contradictory to the goal of reading in the early years, to instill a love of books. "The principle is simple: try to give the child simplified versions of the original literature that he'll be reading in the higher grades, or introduce him (through stories or biographies) to a writer he'll encounter later" (p. 58). In addition to the abridged books, this approach emphasizes reading original texts to the children and regularly play tapes or CDs of the original texts for the children to listen to. For example, my children like to fall asleep to CDs like Journey to the Center of the Earth or Little House on the Prairie. Aidan is at the stage now, however, where I would like him to begin swapping simplified texts for original works. One of his favorite books in the Great Illustrated Classics series has been Robinson Crusoe. He's read it at least ten times. I asked my mother-in-law to get him the real book at a used book store she frequents. That it came as a gift from his Nana was part of the attraction. I prepped the new encounter with all sorts of code words for maturity and advancing to a new big deal. I explained that he's been reading simplified versions of the great books, but now he's old enough to read the adult versions. Aidan laid down on the couch with the real Robinson Crusoe and dug in. John and I were so pleased. We took a picture to cherish the moment.  So, for now, we've shelved Robinson Crusoe and will keep pushing the biographies as our original texts. There are plenty of young adult books he still dives into. Following the classical model for education, Aidan is still in the concrete phase. We were pushing the boundary a bit to move him into something more abstract. Ellie The original scope of my Literacy Action Project was entirely focused on Ellie. It expanded to these other experiences, but because El is my primary literacy experience ri ght now, she is always the lens through which I view the subject. El turned six in January and she is in kindergarten. She is currently amid that special exciting time when a child achieves decoding and begins to grasp the joy of actually reading. As I reflected in class, watching my children learn to read has been the most exciting development in my experience of parenting their little lives. It feels like when they were learning to walk and we cheered on every new step and fall. We know this is special and they are going to have a great experience of life through this wonderful ability. Throughout the semester of Literacy and Development, I have struggled with the concept of more ideological models of literacy precisely because, for El, this process is very autonomous. She could not read, even though she has been able to articulate her desire to read for years now. And now, she can read, but she is still not literate--an object of frustration for her. Further, El's experience of literacy is far more concrete than the descriptions of ideological literacies. It has been easier for me to perceive of the autonomous model of literacy as a borrowing of the term to provide a more concrete description of empowerment, actualization, and cognitive development. This would be considered a symbolic generalization by Habermas, as he described it in his book The Theory of Communicative Action (1987). Through symbolic generalization, a term is used to invoke an often cutting edge, popularly understood field to explain something that is not very well understood. Despite the discussions on how literacy is measured, the term is grounded in its autonomous intention: ability to read. Functional literacy appends that definition with ability to read fast enough to understand the idea of one paragraph and remember it while reading and understanding the idea of the next paragraph. I. The portfolio In December, Ellie's teachers sent home her portfollio assessment for the fall semester. It said, among other things, that Ellie is always a steady student. This word steady is what they use for behaved or contained within the classroom expectations. When the children are fidgety in carpet time, for example, the teacher may say, "Students, steady yourselves." And they do. El exceeds at being steady. The assessment said the teachers used games to encourage her to be a little less steady: tempting her to yell her answer out loud or use her voice to be more involved in group play. Individual skills that require steadiness, like literacy and numeracy, are always her strong points in these portfolios. She enjoys pleasing her teachers and she knows they love it when she sits quietly with her journal as she writes and draws. Regarding literacy, her assessment says: Ellie approaches all literacy activities with focus and enthusiasm. When our study of the alphabet began with a search for letters at The School, Ellie's sharp eyes spied letters on signs, labels, and even backpacks! Ellie's attentiveness during group discussions enables her to participate fully on all assignments [...] Her face lights up during writing time as she independently
generates a topic to write abut and applies her letter-sound understanding to express ideas. She is comfortable adding labels and sentences to accompany her illustrations. Ellie's writing ives an account not only of events that have occurred, but also includes her reflections on the experiences: 'I went too mi socr filld today. It wus fun'; 'I at denr. It wus good'; 'I helpt mi dad srt the m
dins. I luvd doowig it. She diligently stretches out words to hear the beginning, medial, and ending sounds. The assessment includes a sort of strengths/goals depiction through clouds, presumably to help children to conceptualize their progress reports. On El's goal sheet for literacy, the goal cloud is labeled: 'I will continue my literacy development.' Individual strategies in smaller clouds include 'I use a strong, loud voice when speaking to a group.' This is clearly what the teachers hope she will improve upon. The family strategy is 'ask Ellie to make predictions about stories. Ask Ellie to create own stories based on familiar characters.' The request to work on making predictions about stories speaks to a particular trait in El to ask what is going to happen, or ask for the story to be explained mid-story. She has a hard time waiting to see for herself. In TV shows, for example, she often interrupts--or pauses the TiVo--to ask us what is going to happen at a crux of the story. II. Ms. Kim In January, we were asked to approve El's participation in a Teachers College student's literacy project. El was included because she was identified as an 'early reader'. Jessica Kim, "Ms. Kim", would read with El a few times a week and ask her questions about what strategies she uses that help her accomplish her reading progress. El loved Ms. Kim and the sessions were a joy for her. She has a special appreciation for fashion and I think she felt attached to Ms. Kim as a pretty young woman who also dressed especially cute. By February, we noticed a significant change in El's reading during home parent-child reading time. She was gaining ground much faster, and we made the theory that Ms. Kim's reading sessions had themselves become a successful strategy for our little girl. If this is the case, it represents a kind of founders' effect, in which the observer influences the subject's behavior. But his is one effect for which we are grateful. Ms. Kim shared from her sessions: I did a couple of running records with Ellie and she really understands what she's reading. She's able to answer questions about the text and can give specific examples. Ellie tries to sound out words that she's unfamiliar with and often uses the illustrations to help her figure out unknown words, which is a good strategy. From the running record, I gathered that she sometimes makes omission errors as reads so a useful strategy might be teaching her how to reread so that she may be able to self-correct her errors. III. Chapter books A particular challenge for El has been her desire to read like her brother. Aidan reads very large books. He has sped through the entire Harry Potter series, and many of the books in the series are more than 700 pages. She has decided that little kids read thin books and big kids read chapter books. Jack and Annie and the Magic Treehouse or Little House on the Prairie are good examples of the chapter books she carries around the house, pretending to read. When we sit with her, we typically pick a thin book, like the Little Bear series or Dr. Seus books. She does well with them, but as soon as we leave her to read on her own, she returns to the chapter books. When reading with a chapter book, El scans the page full of words with her finger. She used to just find four or five words on the page that she could recognize and read, but increasingly she can make out whole sentences. This is an object of frustration for us, because she wants to read them so bad but is hindering her ability to by not reading the early reader books, first. Conclusion Now, at the conclusion of my semester on literacy and development, and nearing the conclusion of El's kindergarten year, I often reflect on just what about reading is so magic for an individual. I agree with Amartya Sen, that reading increases capabilities, which in turn gives an individual more choices. Knowing how to read was a catalyst ability for my children. It was associated with knowing how to write and the beginnings of being able to learn independently, rather than depend on an individual to provide instruction for them. When I was shadowing the midwife in Ruhiira, the women labored in silence. Even as they were cut into for routine episiotomies and then stitched up, they were not allowed to make a sound. The instruction for silence was implicit, never voiced. But if a woman did cry out, she was often slapped on the legs by the attendant catching the baby. The only woman who communicated her pain to me was also the only uncomplicated delivery I witnessed. She was 20, had completed grade 7, the most of any of the women I witnessed. She looked at me in the eyes and grasped my hand as she said, "Much pain." I credit her literacy directly and her education in general with the fact that she alone found a voice for herself, and that she had managed to delay her first pregnancy to 20 in a region where most first pregnancies occur four to six years earlier. Literacy undoubtedly includes cultural references to power. I remember reading the biography of Frederick Douglas many years ago, in which illiteracy was a critical symbol of his identity as a slave. The white woman who taught him how to read did so illicitly, fearing the wrath of her husband if he found out because slave owners knew it was easier to dominate an illiterate slave. There was a sense of danger slave owners perceived in just what a slave might do if they were literate. The exact same principle of fearing literacy is now applied to utilizing literacy as a tool for improving lives in development. This is why Paulo Freire built an entire philosophy of overcoming oppression on the foundation of achieving literacy. A person is more powerful, more capable, more in control of their own future when they are literate. The full Literacy and Development video playlist can be seen here. The full photo library from my trip to Ruhiira can be seen here. The continuing journal I keep on the children can be seen here. Posts on the topic of literacy can be sorted here. In the coming days, watch attachments (below) for scanned copies of artifacts and journal pages. |