Emily Miller – Blog Post #2:  Response to Heath’s Research

11/1/15

I believe Shirley Brice Heath’s ethnographic research is valuable in pointing out the differences in literary behavior between three geographically proximate communities. She reports on the interactive behaviors around literacy of adults and children from birth until they are school age. It was interesting to read about the details of the homes, the family and community routines and how reading and storytelling is incorporated into the children’s lives. It was also interesting to read actual excerpts of dialogue between adults and children at home, in the community and at school. The children’s language and literacy development is uniquely similar within but drastically different between the three communities. There are two aspects of Heath’s commentary that I found puzzling. One was that she sets out to disprove or question that the literary traditions in non-mainstream homes is responsible for those children’s failure in school, but then draws that very correlation. The other confusing aspect is that she does not allow race to enter into the comparison between the communities in Way with Words.  I plan to address these contradictions from a personal perspective - as an author of an ethnographic study for a class last spring, and as a teacher of adult students, many of whom are first learning how to read critically and connect personally with what they read.

Having completed an ethnographic project for Teaching Writing in Diverse Contexts  last semester, I approached the reading of Way with Words and What No Bedtime Story Means from a familiar perspective. I expected an unbiased account of the literacy rituals in the three settings Heath explored. However, the fact that Heath correlated the children’s success in preschool and higher grades with the way they derived meaning from and interacted with text sounded like a value judgment. I remember a graduate student who could not grasp that an ethnographic study was by definition an objective reporting of an event or a series of events, complete with photographs and detailed descriptions of setting and dialogue. He/she could not validate the purpose of an ethnographic study without it being an opportunity to evaluate/criticize the setting and the parties involved. The rest of the class observed, transcribed and reported objectively on our chosen settings and learned a great deal from the process. I tried to appreciate Heath’s study as objective but found it difficult. Heath cautioned her audience in the prologue of Way with Words not to view the comparison of literary practices between Roadville (white families) and Trackton (black families) as a racial one. But how can one NOT consider race when comparing two groups who are racially different? How can it NOT matter that discrimination against African Americans is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and has always limited their access to fair and equal housing, healthcare and education? I feel like something was disingenuous about Heath’s narrative. Either she should have simply reported the different literacy traditions in Way with Words, or she should not refer to her work as ethnographic, but rather as a prescription for home literary practices that will lead to the greatest success in the mainstream classroom.

In terms of my students in a college readiness program, I feel that many of them did not benefit from early exposure to books as vehicles to entertain, enlighten, comfort or inform. The reasons for this are varied and surfaced on the reading surveys that we asked them to complete during orientation. Many of the students were raised by single parents or parents who worked nights or were too tired to read to them at bedtime. Many don’t have parents who read fluently either in English or their native language. Many grew up in homes with limited children’s book libraries. These same students view reading even now as a means to an end, rather than as satisfying and enjoyable in and of itself.  I feel that as reading/writing instructors it is our responsibility to acknowledge that our students’ families have storytelling and literary traditions that might look very different from those in white middle class families, but are no less valid. We need to acknowledge that our mainstream classrooms ask for a level of close reading, interpretation, participation, and application that may not be a part of our students’ home culture. In order for the students to succeed in college we need to do our best to meet them at their home base and help them grow as readers, writers and critical thinkers.  Heath’s work prompted me to think about my students’ early literacy practices and how the development of language in their homes shaped who they are as learners today. Her research was conducted decades ago and feels dated in many ways but nonetheless it is valuable in looking at the literary practices in the homes of a variety of cultures and how they play out in the classroom.