Emily Miller Blog Post #4: Valuable lessons from Victoria Purcell-Gates

11/22/15

In her introduction to Other People’s Words, Purcell-Gates talks about the shift in perspective in explaining why poor minority children cannot read and write as well as middle class children. As Purcell-Gates sees it, and I agree, the failure is with our schools, not with the children or their parents, who are often poor and low literate as well.  More broadly, it is the failure of the political and societal systems that perpetuate the standards by which we measure literacy success and the methods we have historically employed to educate (or not) our poorest children.  To quote Purcell-Gates, “Deficit explanations, however, are being replaced within research and theoretical circles with one that views all learners from a sociocultural theory of learning” (4). Sadly this shift didn’t happen sooner but it’s still good news, and acts to dispel the myth that something is inherently wrong or missing in homes that don’t prepare children for what happens in the traditional classroom. Different is no longer equated with deficient, and, as Percell-Gates says, “We can no longer make judgments about the abilities and/or disabilities of peoples from sociocultural goups different from our own, using “our” group as the standard (no matter which group is ‘ours’)”(4).

Purcell-Gates proceeds to observe, interpret and ultimately impact the lives of two low-literate people, Jenny and Donny. She offers us a glimpse into what’s not working in our schools and what is possible.  Jenny is the true heroine of Purcell-Gates’ book. She imagines a brighter future for her family and recognizes the cycle of illiteracy that will continue unless she intervenes to stop it.  Jenny learns to read and write as an adult, and she advocates for her children so that they will not slip through the cracks of the same system that failed her when she was in 7th grade and dropped out of school. Purcell-Gates provides details about her interactions with Jenny and Donny and we witness her success at helping them learn to read and write, despite the fact that they had limited to no prior experience with printed material. I feel her most helpful advice to educators, though, comes on page 193, where she outlines the realities that separate the poor from the middle class, and what we must do as a society to correct the inequities that exist in education:

First, we must recruit and train teachers who know, accept, and celebrate the cultures from which their children come. .. The second area in which we must change is the way in which we train and treat our teachers (193).

Published almost 20 years ago, Other People’s Words is nonetheless still relevant and insightful in its perspective. Purcell-Gates offers an interesting ethnographic account of her time with Jenny and Donny, as well as presenting valuable suggestions for teachers of low literacy populations.