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Content LITEEACI EDUCATION AS SOCIAL PRACTICE:
FUNCTIONAL AND CULTURAL LITERACY IN THE WORKPLACE AND
CLASSROOM
by
Lee Ann Leeson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1987
Copyright 1987 Lee Ann Leeson
UMI Number: DP23124
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This dissertation, written by
under the direction of / i C k r . Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
PhXt
E
’ 87
1987
3*3> ez.
3 $
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date F e b r u a r y 19, 1987
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction.................... 1
Part One: Literacy Education:
The Limits of Two Perspectives
Chapter One: Functional Literacy........... .19
Chapter Two: A Member of the Club ........57
Part Two: Literacy Education in Practice
Chapter Three: Overview of An Adult
Literacy Project............. 99
Chapter Four: Literacy Education in the
Khaki-Collar Workplace....... 115
Chapter Five: The Workshop Classroom
Reexamined: Beyond Process
Pedagogy........................1 54-
Concluding Remarks .................... 206
Works Cited.................................... 226
1
INTRODUCTION
Although Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue
Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its
abundance of blue books. Whatever they could
prove (which is usually anything you like) , they
proved there, in an army constantly
strengthening by the arrival of new recruits.
In that charmed apartment, the most complicated
social.questions were cast up, got into exact
totals, and finally settled— if those concerned
could only be brought to know it. As if an
astronomical observatory should be made without
any windows, and the astronomer within should
arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink,
and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind in his Observatory
(and there are many like it), had no need to
cast his eye upon the teeming myriads of human
beings around him, but could settle all their
destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their
tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Teachers are always in danger of becoming Mr.
Gradgrinds. Isolated during their work day in classrooms
and administrative offices, educators, like others in our
society charged with solving complex social problems
neatly, efficiently, and economically, may come to
operate as though their pen, ink, and paper constructions
of the world are sufficient to guide their practice
without critical reference to their own lived experience,
the experience of their students, and that of the
"teeming myriads of human beings" with whom their lives
intersect. This is especially true when we consider
literacy education. ____________________ _
2
In technologically advanced countries in the late
twentieth century, literacy, like language itself, cuts
across all other divisions of activity. It is difficult
to think of any area of life that has not been affected
by written language. This means that the universe
educators must plot when they confront the task of
providing universal literacy education is ,a most complex
one. Ideally, teachers are to ensure that students
acquire the knowledge and skills, all the uses of reading
and writing, that are necessary for full participation in
a democratic society. Our practice, however, is limited
both by external constraints and by our own conceptions
of how literacy does and could function in the lives of
children and of adults. To push the limits of our views
requires that we cast a critical eye at the ways in which
literacy functions inside and outside of classrooms.
That we need to push those limits is evidenced by
the failure of public education to promote the literacy
development of many groups of children and adults— the
twenty-five per cent of students who do not complete high
school, the estimated 23 million Americans who cannot
read and write even at the most minimal levels, the
additional perhaps 40 million who are functionally
literate only on a very basic level (Hunter and Harmon
x-xi), the college students, especially in open
3
admissions programs, who are shunted first into remedial
classes and then, all too often out of the system.
The current public perception of a "literacy crisis"
in the United States has led to a variety of
prescriptions both for educational reform in the public
schools and for expanded programs for adult learners.
Program planners can too easily fall into Mr. Gradgrind’s
mistake of assuming they could "cure" illiteracy if only
those concerned, children and adults, teachers and
students could be brought to follow the reformers'
prescriptions. The perceived failure of many adults to
meet the standards of a schooled, mainstream American
society is blamed on a number of causes including
supposed deficits in family or cultural background, a
failing educational system, and lack of individual
motivation.
In Part I of this work, I want to examine current
prescriptions for literacy education that have wide,
general influence on planning and practice in
traditional, classroom-centered programs kindergarten to
university and in adult literacy projects. Two general
conceptions of literacy education are often placed in
opposition. On the one hand, "functional literacy" makes
relatively limited claims for the value of literacy and
focuses on the effort to provide individuals with the_____
4
specific skills and knowledge they need to pursue their
everyday lives. On the other hand, a more liberal view
promotes literacy as both the legacy and the vehicle of
our cultural heritage and argues for the general value of
literacy in a humanistic education. It is currently
fashionable to subsume or reject both of these
traditional aims of literacy education in favor of a
third perspective— "critical literacy." Drawing
particularly on the work of Paolo Freire, "critical
literacy" aims toward the goal of "conscientization,"
raising the learners’ consciousness of their own
situation and capacity for social change. However,
Freire’s goals and methods are not easily adapted to the
American classroom. As part of a land reform scheme in
Brazil or revolution in Nicaragua, critical literacy
serves the interest of a clearly political, radical
critique of the existing social structure. While
promoting social equality may be one aim of American
education, most educators still have a strong interest in
maintaining a relatively stable society and believe that
it is in the best interests of students for teachers to
help them meet several different goals— to be successful
workers and citizens, to participate as fully as possible
in a rich culture, and to view critically their own lives
and society. __________________________
5
In theory it is not difficult to see that these goals
may often conflict with each other and with the lived
experience of the least literate, most marginalized
groups in the society. Part II of this study focuses on
conflicting views of literacy education and diverse
literacy practices in one specific setting, a model adult
literacy project co-sponsored by the University of
Southern California and a state funded job training
program, the California Conservation Corps (CCC). In
both the general analysis in Part I and the case study in
Part II of this work, I am interested in how diverse
views have developed and how they play out, especially in
the classroom and the workplace. I will examine how
literacy education theory and practice are shaped by and,
in turn, change the shape of social contexts in which
people read and write.
Throughout my analysis, I view literacy as
constituted in and through recurrent social practices.
For my perspective here, I draw particularly on the work
of Anthony Giddens who attempts to bring together
thinking in social theory and hermeneutics. Giddens
suggests that we identify social systems in terms of
practices that recur in patterns of social interactions
reproduced over space and time. In this view, the
relationship between local interactions and social________
6
systems is recursive; the system is constituted of these
interactions and in turn shapes interactions. The system
is structured by the "rules” and "resources" including
knowledge, social relationships, and physical resources
that both enable and constrain action (8-26). Power
relationships are a crucial aspect of systems
characterized by relationships of autonomy and
dependence. Participants in day-to-day interactions
actualize a shifting balance of resources (28-39»
197-200). Structure, like social systems, is dynamic and
recursive, being both the "medium and the outcome" of
human activities (10).
Cooper in a recent article in College English
develops a similar perspective focusing directly on
literacy. Specifically, she proposes an analysis of
writing as "an activity through which a person is
continually engaged with a variety of socially
constituted systems" (367). For purposes of analysis, we
may distinguish many such systems including "systems of
ideas, of purposes, of interpersonal interactions, of
cultural norms, of textual forms." These systems
interact dynamically in the actual activities of writing
and reading. To attempt to change one aspect of the
system is to affect all others.
7
Giddens reiterates a point made by Garfinkel, that
human beings are not "cultural dopes." They know the
"rules" of these systems in which they participate (199)-
This knowledge may be "discursive," present for conscious
analysis; or "practical," a tacit understanding of how to
proceed in everyday life (9). My purpose throughout the
study is to try to make discursive the practical
knowledge of program planners, teachers, and students
about literacy practices. In the schemes for general
literacy education I examine in Part I and the specific
program I analyze in Part II, I want to begin to answer
this question: where literacy practices promoted by
educators (or by the employer in the case of the CCG) are
taken up by children and adults, what features of the
social structure, what rules and resources enable and
constrain these practices? Further, when literacy
practices supposedly desired by the mainstream society
are not taken up, what features of the social structure
are operating? What trade-offs in power relationships
characterize literacy interactions viewed either at the
level of program planning or in day-to-day life in the
workplace and classroom?
In more concrete terms, my questions grow out of my
experience first as a teacher in a mid-city high school
in Los Angeles, and then as a teacher and program planner
8
working with young adults in the CGC, most of whom had
either dropped out of or been graduated from junior and
senior highs very similar to the one in which I worked.
In the past two years, as director of the USC Writing
Project, I have had the further opportunity to try out
some of my perceptions in workshops with other teachers.
Our concern has been primarily with children and young
adults whose literacy practices are viewed as limited or
deficient. Growing from this concern are some of the
general questions addressed by each chapter.
Chapter One: How do social factors determine what counts
as "functional literacy" and structure the acquisition of
functional skills?
Chapter Two: What "rules" and distribution of resources
support membership in the various "literacy clubs"
posited by cultural humanists?
Chapter Four: What are some of the ways that the
structure of a bureaucratic "khaki-collar" workplace both
facilitates and constrains the literacy practices of
workers?
Chapter Five: How does the classroom run as a workshop
focused on writing as process structure the development
of literacy practices?
Chapter Three provides background information on the
history, the setting, and the people of the California
9
Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Model Literacy Project.
In my practical analysis of this project in Part II, I
want to demonstrate some of the ways that strategies
developed in the workshop classroom can inform the
workplace, especially in terms of job training and human
development and, at the same time, to demonstrate some of
the ways the bureaucratic workplace can inform the
classroom. In addition, I also want to consider how the
classroom itself functions as_ a workplace.
One of the greatest benefits of working with young
adults in the CCC was in the contrast between
their day-to-day experience and the assumptions of the
academic classroom. The sociolinguist, Dell Hymes,
stresses the value of contrast in developing
ethnographies of communication. He points out,
"Individual accounts that individually pass
without notice, as familiar possibilitie, leap out when
juxtaposed, as contrasts that require explanation" (33).
It is through this contrast that we can make our
practical knowledge discursive. It is not my intention
here to produce a detailed ethnography of the CCC or of a
single adult literacy project. My purpose, instead, is
to examine the assumptions of my own field of expertise,
literacy education, in light of the lived experience of
10
teachers and students, young adult workers and their
supervisors.
While the focus of this study is on literacy
education, my perspective is influenced by more general,
multidisciplinary theory and research on literacy as well
as by the literature exploring the relationships of
language, class, schooling, and work. This literature
supports several assumptions that underlie my analysis.
Most apparent in the literature directly focused on
literacy is a shift from a model of literacy in which
specific practices, consequences, and values are viewed
as inherent in literacy itself to a more socially
grounded perspective demonstrating that literacy is
always for something and "that the presence and
utilization of literacy depend on the nature of the
society in question" (Oxenham 6-7).
It is common, then, in current work on literacy to
maintain that literacy practices must be viewed in their
"social context."Some key studies supporting this
position can be quickly reviewed. Earlier work done in
the seventies from a historical perspective, especially
by Walter Ong, Jack Goody, and David Olson seemed to
suggest a "grand dichotomy" between literate and
non-literate peoples and to offer literacy as the key to
abstract, logical thought. Work continues to try to
11
determine what the benefits and consequences of literacy
might be for particular groups of people at specific
times and places. However, cognitive psychologists like
Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, sociolinguists and
anthropologists like Shirley Brice Heath, Ron Scollon and
Suzanne Scollon, Susan Phillips, Alonzo Anderson and
Shelley Stokes, Anderson and Peg Griffin, Brian Street
and others who have studied language practices in a
variety of settings seem to warn against overgeneralizing
the consequences of literacy. Scribner and Cole's study
of the literacy practices of the Vai people of Liberia
indicates that the particular skills associated with
various types of reading and writing are closely related
to the specific contexts in which literacy is acquired
and practiced. Heath's comparison of black and white,
working class and "mainstream" communities; Scollon and
Scollon's analysis of the "consciousness" of Athabaskan
speakers; Phillips' study of communication on an Indian
reservation; Anderson, Stokes, and Griffin's comparison
of literacy events' in Anglo, Black, and Mexican-American
families in San Diego— all of these studies should
suggest to educators that no one prescription for
literacy education can be appropriate for all learners in
all settings. In addition, this work and Brian Street's
analysis of international literacy campaigns illustrate
12
that the extent to which individuals and groups "value"
various uses of literacy and literacy education is not
merely a matter of individual and cultural preference
hut, further, reflects the social stratification of
knowledge and literacy practices in schools, workplaces,
and communities.
Literacy programs and methods of teaching reading and
writing necessarily rest on socially conditioned
assumptions about literacy. In turn, the context in
which literacy instruction is given, the ways in which
time, space, materials, activities, and social
relationships are structured, offer implicit lessons
about what counts as knowledge, about what literacy is,
about what literacy is for. Case studies and specific
descriptions of the early literacy development of
children both inside and outside of school by Harste,
Woodward, and Burke, Graves, Bissex, Taylor, and the
authors of the essays collected in the volume Awakening
to Literacy (Goelman, Oberg, and Smith) while seeking to
trace general patterns of development, at the same time,
indicate again a variety of literacy practices embedded
in very specific social contexts. The classroom is an
arena in which these various practices interact.
Recent literature in the new sociology of schooling
has increasingly viewed this interaction as problematic,
13
characterized by conflict as well as cooperation among
classes, races, and other groups of unequal power. Early
research on language and schooling either suggested or
was taken to suggest that children from disadvantaged
socio-economic backgrounds suffered from language
deficits (see Edwards for a review). More current
research such as that of Labov, Bernstein, and Heath
tends to focus on the "mismatch" between the skills
children develop in homes and communities and those
expected and rewarded in classrooms. This view is
supported by the case studies of researchers like
Richards, Michaels and Cook-Gumperz, Gumperz and
Cook-Gumperz, Mehan, and Blank. Radical critiques of
schooling view this conflict in the classroom not merely
as a technical problem" to be solved by more effective
methodology but as an ethical and political issue at the
heart of public education. These radical critiques
underscore the role of the school not only in
transmitting knowledge and skills but also in reproducing
and legitimizing the power structures of the society in
which it is embedded. Harvey Graff, Geraldine Clifford,
and Richard Ohmann trace historically the function of the
school in preparing and- sorting individuals for labor in
the workplace and unequal status. Bowles and Gintis,
Henry Giroux and Stanley Aronowitz, and Ira Shor locate
14
the failure of most school reform movements in conflicts
created by the paradoxical functions of the school— on
the one hand, schools speak to "a very real need on the
part of all socio-economic classes to learn about and
transform the nature of their existence'1 and on the other
hand, schools function to maintain "a society
characterized by a high degree of social and economic
inequality" (Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and The Process
of Schooling 143)* Paulo Freire writing about literacy
campaigns in the context of revolutionary change and
Jonathon Kozol documenting the human cost of illiteracy
in the United States quite clearly identify the struggle
for full literacy with the struggle against oppression,
recognizing, however, that literacy alone viewed merely
as the technical skills of encoding and decoding written
language cannot offset real economic, social, and
political forces that create and maintain distinctions
among groups of unequal power.
Viewing literacy as an activity, an activity in which
individuals and collectives interact, means that literacy
is intrinsically connected to the notion of power. To
act is to make a difference in the world. In our later
workshops with the California Conservation Corps, we came
to call the "brand" of literacy we were advocating,
"active literacy," not simply knowing how to decode and
15
encode written language, but being able to use reading
and writing to get things done in the world. These
"things” range from the small— reading a label on a soup
can to get the kind of soup you prefer— to making major
differences— writing a proposal that establishes a new
state agency or a novel that influences the world view of
readers.
The concept of "active literacy" suggests that
specific literacy practices in and of themselves are
neither good nor bad. I prefer this term to "critical
literacy" which I believe has been overused to refer to
everything from writing revolutionary poetry in Nicaragua
to completing "values clarification" exercises in a
reading workbook. "Active literacy" like critical
literacy suggests that literacy practices only have value
in terms of the differences they make in the lives of
individuals and groups of people and that in literacy
education, we tend to place greater value on those
practices that give individuals greater autonomy, more
power to make a difference in the world. It recognizes,
however, that literacy interactions like other
interactions involve trade-offs in what Giddens refers to
as the "dialectic of control" (39)• Critical literacy
used as a catchphrase in radical American education seems
to imply that "good" literacy continually opposes the
16
power structures of mainstream society. "Active
literacy" suggests the value of literacy practices in
maintenance as well as change, in the mundane as well as
the revolutionary. In the following chapters, I am not
saying simply that literacy practices must be viewed in
"social context," that the context forms a kind of
backdrop or setting in which literacy takes place. I am
saying that literacy activities as one aspect of human
activities are constitutive of the context of classrooms
and workplaces in a way that is dynamic and recursive.
Program planners, teachers, students, employers and
workers by their actions continually reconstitute the
context influenced by and reshaping a structure of rules
and resources. Literacy education aims to bring about
change, development. I support the view that the
"pay-offs" of literacy and the "problems" of illiteracy
while particularized in the lives of individuals are
largely systematic and structural. Structural
relationships in groups and institutions both enable and
constrain literacy practices in ways unexpected by
educators.
This study will not demonstrate a wonderful "cure"
for limited literacy that we developed in working with
young adults in the CCC. In fact, although this is not
news, we discovered again how difficult it is to bring
17
about change in the systems and structure of the
classroom and the workplace. With each change we bring
about slightly new structures, and these structures again
inevitably constrain as well as enable literacy
practices. Each change must be measured in terms of
active literacy. What are the trade-offs? How do we
change the rules, redeploy resources?
Few would argue with the "functional1 1 perspective
that literacy must be relevant and useful or the
"cultural humanist" view that literacy is a key to full
participation in a rich and complex culture. I hope to
demonstrate in Part I on the level of program planning,
and in Part II on the level of workplace and classroom
practice, some of the "costs" involved in reaching these
goals. This demonstration should be useful to teachers
and students in outlininghow learning to read or write
in a new way may mean changing everything from how time
and space are used in the classroom to how one functions
as an employee of a bureaucratic organization. This
demonstration may be useful to program planners and
academics in providing an additional perspective to
consider when they attempt to introduce new approaches or
new ways of thinking about literacy.
18
PART ONE:
LITERACY EDUCATION:
THE LIMITS OF TWO PERSPECTIVES
19
CHAPTER ONE: FUNCTIONAL LITERACY
All educational practice implies a theoretical
stance on the educator's part. This stance
implies— sometimes more, sometimes less
explicitly— an interpretation of man and the world.
(Freire, "The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural
Action for Freedom" 363)
To work to change literacy practices through
education implies a theory about literacy. To engage in
the effort of teaching or learning to read and write
implies at the very least that literacy has some value
either for the individual or for the society or both.
Decisions about when, where, how, and what to teach
similarly are rooted in assumptions about what literacy
is, what literacy is for, and how literacy is acquired or
facilitated. These assumptions may be stated directly in
explicit arguments for and against educational reform, or
they may be derived by examining pedagogical practices to
reveal their underlying premises. The idea of
"functional literacy," focusing on the ways individuals
use reading and writing to accomplish tasks in their
everyday lives, is central to the current perception of a
"literacy crisis" in the United States. What are the
assumptions of functional literacy? What claims does
functional literacy make about the benefits of literacy
for individuals and society?
20
The idea of functional literacy developed after World
War II in an attempt to move away from generalized claims
for the value of literacy and arbitrary measurements of
literacy/illiteracy. It developed in the context of
international literacy campaigns, especially those
promoted by UNESCO. Initially, these campaigns had
envisioned broadly humanistic goals bringing cultural
enrichment. Sir Julian Huxley, Executive Secretary of
the Preparatory Commission of UNESCO, suggested in 194-7
that literacy could have the effect on the peoples of the
world of "...sending them to the stored treasures of art
and wisdom or promoting a deeper understanding of nature
and human life" (qtd. in Levine 251). However, this view
of literacy was soon recognized as politically
unpalatable and practically infeasible. Emerging nations
were understandably resistant to paternalistic Western
views of literacy and culture and certainly lacked the
resources and the incentive to mount massive literacy
campaigns with the primary goal of bringing high culture
to the masses (Levine 251-253).
At the same time, arbitrary measures of literacy,
such as number of years of schooling completed, were seen
to be of limited value. In the first place, there is
not, of course, any exact correlation between years
completed and the level of skills attained. Even more
21
important was the growing recognition that literacy
activities of individuals vary greatly according to
social setting and expectations. The literacy practices
and needs of agricultural workers in the United States,
for example, are likely to be quite different from those
of agricultural workers in less industrialized countries.
As a result, in international literacy programs
increasing attention was paid to the functions or uses of
literacy for specific groups of people. In 1962, UNESCO
developed the following functional definition of
literacy, a definition which continues to be widely cited
and with some modifications to define the goals of many
current adult literacy programs. The UNESCO 1962
definition states that:
A person is literate when he has acquired the
essential knowledge and skills which enable him to
engage in all those activities in which literacy is
required for effective functioning in his group and
community and whose attainments in reading, writing,
and arithmetic make it possible for him to continue
to use these skills toward his own and the
community’s development. (qtd. in Hunter and Harman
U)
This definition and variations of it are purposely
broad enough to address the concerns of many nations with
a diversity of cultural backgrounds, political systems,
and plans for economic development. As a result, because
the term "functional literacy” is used so broadly, the
22
practices associated with it vary considerably from
project to project.
On the one hand, the UNESCO definition recognizes the
key points that John Oxenham makes in Literacy; Writing,
Reading, and Social Organization that literacy is alx^ays
for something and "that the presence and utilisation of
literacy depend on the nature of the society in question"
(6-7). As is pointed out by the Adult Literacy and Basic
Skills Unit in the United Kingdom, "In the adult world we
DO things with reading and writing." They stress that
many of the "exercises" used to impart literacy to
children in schools are either inappropriate to adults or
need to be recast to suggest how particular literacy
skills may be applied in relevant social settings. (qtd.
in Street 219)
On the other hand, a functional approach to literacy
raises two areas of questions. In the first place, who
decides what skills are needed for "effective
functioning" and how may these skills be acquired?
Secondly, functional literacy is generally associated
with the idea of economic development, a view that
literacy contributes to improvement in the economic
conditions both of nations and individuals. To what
extent is that view justified? These are very real
questions for planners, teachers, and learners in
23
traditional K-12 and college classrooms as well as in
adult literacy programs. Because the UNESCO definition
mentions group and community, it seems to take a socially
relevant perspective. Yet, I will argue that functional
literacy offers a limited conception of literacy
education to the extent that it presents literacy
activities and skills as neutral, unrelated to questions
of value, and overlooks how literacy practices are
embedded in the flow of everyday life and in
relationships between individuals, groups, and
institutions.
Functional Literacy As "Survival Skills"
If we think of functionality as usefulness or having
relevance in a particular social context, then the term
"functional literacy" might indeed refer to a very wide
variety of literacy activities. Certainly it is as
functional for an English professor to read belle-lettres
or a lawyer to write briefs as it is for a teenager to
read a driver's training manual or a shopper to examine
product labels. However, functional literacy is more
generally associated with basic or "survival" skills, the
minimum reading, writing, and arithmetic skills presumed
necessary to function in day-to-day life and especially
in the workplace. There is a sense that, failing other
24
more ambitious goals, public education should at least
produce graduates who can complete simple, everyday
tasks.
Functional literacy may seem on the surface almost to
be able to avoid questions of value. Surely, it would be
to the benefit of any adult in the United States to be
able to fill out a job application, read simple
directions, interpret a telephone bill. The problem is
not, of course, with these particular activities. The
problem lies with the way in which these activities are
abstracted from the social context with little attention
paid to why and how adults actually take on and
accomplish tasks such as driving, shopping, or making a
phone call, tasks in which literacy may play a part but
is not the main focus of the activity.
A fairly common procedure in designing functional
literacy programs iso compile an inventory of specific
tasks or "skills" thought necessary for adults. Los
Angeles Unified School District, for example, like many
other school systems nationwide, requires students to
pass minimum proficiency examinations in order to receive
a high school diploma. One of these exams, the SHARP Test
(Senior High Assessment of Reading Performance) focuses
on "survival reading." Instructional materials related
to the test were piloted in 1977. and later, somewhat____
25
refined and more attractively packaged, were marketed
nationally by a major textbook publisher. These
materials "cover'1 90 different forms and documents
ranging from road signs, labels, and newspaper ads to an
affidavit of voter registration, a library card
application, and a freeway map (LAUSD, SHARP Teacher's
Guide).
These are "programmed" materials in a "kit," each
document and related multiple choice questions printed in
a separate folder. The program is "individualized." All
students are tested in grade 10. The teacher receives a
computerized print-out for those who have failed the test
indicating which items were missed. Students in
remediation classes are directed to work on material
related to missed items. This is "mastery learning."
Students are to demonstrate proficiency with one document
before moving on to the next.
In order to motivate students to master this
material, teachers are invited to read to them the
following statement:
The goal of the new materials, which you will be
working with today, is to help you learn about
survival reading. Survival reading is the ability
to use printed material on forms and documents
required in everyday life. Can anyone give me some
examples of forms that are commonly required in the
adult world? (ANY type of form or document would be
an acceptable answer.) Some of the forms or_________
26
documents in the SHARP Instructional Program will
already be familiar to you. The unfamiliar forms or
documents you will most likely encounter later in
your adult life. (LAUSD)
The remainder of the first lesson deals exclusively
with the rather complicated management of the kit,
activity booklets, and response sheets. This approach
works to the extent that students with at least minimal
reading ability do become more familiar with the
vocabulary and format of the documents and with the
structure of the exam and, generally, perform better on
the test the second time around. In real classrooms,
teachers often use at least some of the materials for
whole or small group instruction so there is discussion
of how these forms and documents might actually function
in the "adult world.”
What is wrong, of course, is that, although the
materials might be functional in the "real” world, it is
hard to see how working through this kit of materials
will substantially alter how young people themselves
function in the world. Kenneth Levine in a critique of
functional literacy makes the key point that "print is
typically an incidental and auxiliary feature of a great
many social situations and settings; there are many
substitutes and strategies for circumventing it” (261).
A study by Mikulecky of writing in the workplace
27
underscores the point that in many tasks involving
literacy "efficient completion of the task drives the
activity" (53)• The emphasis is not on the comprehension
of texts, per se, but on application. Mikuleeky
indicates that the completion of any particular task
often involves a mixture of language modalities and
social interaction. Nurses, for example, typically
"read, write, perform operations, ask questions, listen
to responses in an on-going cycle" (52). Similarly,
Shirley Brice Heath in her study of working class
families in South Carolina describes how adults discuss
with each other and with children the meaning and
application of printed materials from Bible stories to a
notice of a new day care center (Chap. 7). On the other
hand, functional literacy programs that focus on basic
competencies, mastery learning, and individualized,
programmed instruction discourage social interaction
among learners and the use of oral language to facilitate
reading and writing.
The SHARP program and others like it, while they
appear to take a "functional" approach, really still
teach reading skills in isolation, not in use, and hope
that these skills "transfer" over into real life
applications despite increasing evidence against the
general transferability of literacy skills (see for_______
28
example Mikulecky 62). Because print typically is
incidental in a great many social settings, it is not
usually the lack of a particular literacy skill alone
that constrains "the efficient completion of a task."
For example, Louis, a young adult I worked with in the
USG Model Literacy Project, decided after several months
of tutoring that he would like to select and check out
his own books from the library. This involved a
considerable joint effort. Filling out the application
form, a SHARP Test item, was the easiest part. Louis
liked the books I brought in from the college library but
could not get a card there. We needed to consult the
telephone directory to find the closest public library
and call to find out the hours it was open. Louis asked
me to go with him on his first trip. . Would he feel out
of place there? Did you need a card to get in? What
about the business of "due dates" and "fines?" In the
library, Louis wanted help locating books on landscaping
and children’s books that he could take home to his son.
The lack of another SHARP skill, knowing ho\/ to
interpret a TV guide, certainly did not keep Louis from
watching television. He had memorized the schedule of
the days and channels of his favorite shows and learned
about new shows from his co-workers and relatives. On
the other hand, when appropriate demonstrations of the
29
skill in question are available and when the skill is
embedded in an activity with meaning for the learner, it
seems that learning to scan a guide for information can
be mastered even by relatively unskilled readers. For
example, I recently observed a second grader who has
become an avid TV guide user. A TV guide is a standard
item in Sandy's home frequently consulted by her parents.
Sandy's own TV viewing has been restricted to programs
her parents feel are appropriate for children. From her
friends, Sandy has heard of other programs she would like
to watch. She has quickly learned to use the guide both
for her favorite shows and to locate the forbidden
programs her parents would not tell her about. Sandy's
parents are somewhat dismayed by her acquisition of this
new skill.
The obvious point to make is that made by educator
Frank Smith and others that literacy skills are generally
acquired through participation in demonstrations of
reading and writing in use for a particular purpose, to
accomplish a goal. It is relatively easy to see how many
of the tasks associated with functional literacy might be
accomplished in the classroom. If we want young adults
to be able to fill out applications for library cards, it
would make sense to take frequent "field trips" to local
public libraries. If we think reading a TV guide is a
30
good thing, why not bring a guide in each week and ask
groups of students to post a lists of shows they think
are worth watching. Young adults in a classroom might
also write their own reviews, draw up a list of viewing
suggestions for younger children, perhaps even develop
and video-tape their own programs. "Real” newspapers,
maps, election materials, signs, and directions might be
used as classroom texts along with or instead of the
reading anthologies. This approach to making literacy
functional requires that teachers have considerable
autonomy in planning, in deciding how time will be used
during the school day, and in selecting and purchasing
materials.
Functional Literacy as Passive Literacy
Although it is important to stress how particular
literacy skills may develop and be applied in the context
of meaningful activities involving social interaction and
mixed language modalities, it is equally important to
consider why any particular set of "tasks" or "skills"
should be included in an functional literacy inventory.
Why these particular "tasks?" Why these "skills?"
Although skills are often presented as given, simply the
basics necessary to function in our society, any
inventory obviously implies a particular perspective on
31
what constitutes adequate functioning in the United
States in the late twentieth century. Levine points out
that the skills appearing on most inventories tend to
emphasize passive and consuming roles (261-262). This is
most apparent in their emphasis on reading activities as
opposed to writing. To function adequately is taken to
mean being able to receive and comprehend messages in
one’s role as a consumer, as a citizen in a bureaucratic
state, and as a worker. Writing is restricted almost
entirely to filling out forms, yet as Levine again
argues, "...it is writing competencies on the whole that
are capable of initiating change" (262).
Educators may normalize this emphasis on reading as
opposed to writing by maintaining that it is too much to
expect that those who do not read well will be able to
write. However, increasing evidence from studies of
children and adults indicates that writing may in fact
precede reading and, indeed, help to facilitate the
acquisition of reading skills. Studies by Harste,
Woodward, and Burke; Donald Graves; and Glenda Bissex are
among those that document extensive writing by young
children for a variety of purposes. In studies of
adults, Scribner and Cole indicate that the non-schooled
literacy of the Vai people of Liberia focuses primarily
on letter writing, both the sending and receiving of
32
messages. As part of adult literacy programs in England,
beginning students in "Write First Time" groups produce
newsletters and literacy materials based on their own
needs and experiences (Street 223).
In these initial efforts children may require
considerable support from adults. As for adults
themselves, among the Vai, learners seek and receive
informal tutoring from other adults. Adults in England's
"Write First Time" groups accomplish tasks by working
together in editorial teams. In contrast, functional
literacy programs that emphasize mastery of discrete,
decontextualized "competencies" in totally individualized
instruction encourage passiveness through their method as
well as through their selection of tasks to be mastered.
The emphasis is on taking in information and coming up
with correct answers. Students are discouraged from
workin together, from pooling their knowledge, from
drawing on their collective experience to accomplish
tasks.
Two examples may serve to illustrate the failure of
many functional literacy programs to present literacy in
ways that children and adults might be able to use to
change their lives. To return, first, to what might seem
a trivial example, in the SHARP materials a TV guide is
presented simply as a source of information. Competency
33
is demonstrated by the ability to "read" both the format
and content of the guide, to identify which programs are
on which channels at which times. A TV guide is, of
course, representative of other types of guides,
catalogs, schedules, and listings which are set up so the
reader can scan for particular bits of information. The
presumed function of such information is to aid the user
in making choices. However, once again, a TV guide like
other texts is hardly a neutral document. Who writes and
publishes such guides and for what purposes? If one
function of reading a guide is to make choices about
viewing, one might ask what choice means when the content
of all programming is essentially the same on all
networks and when the same fast-food, car, and aspirin
commercials will be seen no matter which channel is
chosen. In terms of social interaction, one might wonder
how real children living in families with brothers and
sisters and neighborhood friends actually negotiate
decisions about what to watch or how mothers who cannot
afford child care and are afraid to let their children
play outside view the role of television. These issues
are unlikely to be raised by one learner working alone on
programmed learning materials. They are important though
to understanding how literacy functions as only one
34 -
component, and often not an especially important one, in
a matrix of other activities.
A second example is drawn from another area often
covered by functional literacy materials, that of
"consumer awareness" especially "comparison shopping."
Competencies in this area usually are described in terms
of the ability to read and compare information about
products in advertisements and on labels. However, this
passive literacy, the taking in of information may again
be insufficient to affect how individuals function. One
of my colleagues in the USC Model Literacy Project
decided to focus a group meeting on comparison shopping
for food. He brought in newspaper ads and lists of
wholesale markets and discount stores in our city. Our
young adult students earning minimum wages were
definitely interested. However, almost none of them had
cars. They all work a long day and many commute over
considerable distances on public transportation. They
buy food primarily at fast-food restaurants and at local
markets within walking distance. Buying in bulk or
buying larger size containers does mean lower prices.
But even if they could transport and store food in
volume, they often only have enough cash on hand to meet
immediate needs and could not afford the greater initial
outlay.
35
Again, reading alone is neither the main problem nor
the solution. Materials prepared by the Adult Literacy
and Basic Skills Unit in the United Kingdom on food and
nutrition have been designed by teams of teachers and
learners and are meant to be used within the context of
an on-going dialogue. They do provide "information”
about nutrition, product pricing, labels, advertising,
etc. But all of this is open-ended, a framework meant to
encourage talking about both individual and cultural food
preferences, ways of cooking, family resources, choice
available in the local community. The emphasis is on
helping learners define what they want and need to know.
For example, in a class of pregnant women taught by a
colleague, Jane Mackillop, in Sheffield, England the
focus of talk and reading may be on interpreting the
information on nutrition and pregnancy that women get
from public health agencies. The group goes beyond just
teaching passive literacy skills and forms a support
network to help women find and get the services they
need.
Clearly, for literacy to be truly functional the
tasks associated with functional literacy must be more
broadly defined and go beyond decoding and comprehending
individual texts. Teaching methods should encourage
social interaction and a mix of language modalities,
36
including writing, as appropriate and effective means of
accomplishing tasks. One means of improving the choice
of foods available at reasonable prices for those living
in the inner city has been to pressure and persuade the
larger chain stores to open markets in city
neighborhoods. This type of community action involves
more than simply taking in information. Taking notes,
writing letters, making phone calls, speaking and
listening in groups, designing flyers, finding out who
are sources of information and power in the community,
etc. can be steps to bringing about change. To remember
the limits of literacy, it would, of course, be naive to
imagine that it is literacy itself that is the key
ingredient in social change. Political and economic
factors will influence where discount supermarkets are
located} a new market in the neighborhood wil have both
benefits and disadvantages. However, to stress literacy
tasks that only maintain the status quo is to encourage
passive acceptance and consumption and to take a limited
view of what constitutes effective functioning.
Again, classroom teachers may argue that the view of
literacy in action goes beyond the abilities of their
students or beyond the objectives they as teachers hope
to meet. They may maintain that students need to first
master the "basics,1 1 and then they can deploy these______
37
skills in any way they choose outside the classroom.
These teachers perpetuate what Freire calls the "banking
concept" of education, the idea that learners are empty,
that skills can be deposited in them for later use
("Adult Literacy Process" 365). But no learner exists in
an empty space. Every child and adult already exists
actively or passively in the web of written language that
in our society permeates every aspect of our lives. When
literacy practices are presented as unrelated to the
learner's lived experience, there may seem to be little
reason for learning; a TV guide or newspaper ads seem no
more relevant, no more functional than the stories in a
basal reader. If schools are to persuade students that
they will actually learn in classrooms functional skills
they can apply outside of the school, then it is entirely
appropriate that both younger students and adults
investigate through observation, discussion, reading,
interviewing, writing, etc. how daily tasks are
accomplished in their communities and how political and
economic interests influence the choices available to
them. If teachers through literacy education hope to
promote greater social equality, then such an active
stance is essential. Through social interaction even
beginning readers and writers can take active roles in
their own learning. Several students may work together
38
to compose a letter, perhaps with editorial assistance
from the teacher; all learn from participating in a
demonstration of literacy in use.
Functional Literacy and "The Good Life"
To return again to Freire, it is well to keep in mind
his statement, "All educational practice implies a
theoretical stance on the educator's part. This stance
implies— sometimes more, sometimes less explicitly— an
interpretation of man and the world" (363)* Consider for
a moment the complete list of documents students are to
become proficient with for the SHARP test. What sort of
citizens, what visions of the world does this list
conjure up?
CROSS-REFERENCE OF SHARP TEST AND SHARP MINI-COURSE KIT
SHARP Test
Items SECTION A
9 -1 2
13-16
17-20
21-24
25-28
29-32
33-36
37-40
1-4
5-8
Discount Store Application
Library Card
Letter
Voter Registration
Unemployment Insurance
Job Application
Change of Address Order
Rental Application
Driver's License Test
Social Security
SECTION B
41-44
45-48
Reading Signs
Clothing Tag
39
4.9-52 Want Ad
53-56 Warranty
57-60 Bank Signature Card
61-64- Blank Check
65-68 Index for Yellow Pages
69-72 Dictionary
73-76 Charge Account
77-80 Newspaper Item
SECTION C
81-84 TV Page
85-88 Highway Map
89-92 Street and Freeway Map
93-96 Area Code Map
97-100 Cash Register Tape
101-104 Income Tax Return
105-108 Job Resume
109-112 Bank Statement
113-116 Utility Bill
117-120 Recipe
Literate persons in the world of SHARP are
individuals who at least try to get jobs and if
unsuccessful resort to unemployment insurance. They run
up bills, but they pay them and their income tax, and
notify their creditors with a change of address form when
they move. They are smart shoppers who get the most for
their money. They can scan guides like the Yellow Pages
and T.V. page for information and follow simple
directions as in a recipe. They exercise their rights as
citizens by voting.
Minimum competency In literacy is equated with
reaching at least the minimum standards of the good life
in the United States— holding a job, renting a place to
live, having a car, having some spendable income, being
40
entertained at least by television, and having some
access to public life at least through reading the
newspaper and voting. Implicitly and often explicitly,
functional literacy seems to claim that the acquisition
of literacy skills can improve an individual’s standard
of living. We have already seen that literacy alone,
especially literacy viewed primarily as reading skills,
does not, for example, necessarily improve the quality of
life in an area like nutrition. What about employment?
SHARP seems to suggest that knowing how to fill out a job
application correctly and neatly or being able to read
and follow directions would be minimum standards for
adequate employment. The current focus on the adult
literacy "crisis" in the United States repeatedly
stresses the economic benefits of literacy both to
individuals and the nation. To what extent are these
claims justified?
Barbara Bush, the wife of Vice-President George Bush,
has chosen to focus on adult illiteracy as a special
project during her husband’s term in office. In a short
article entitled, "Why We Can’t Afford Illiteracy and
What We Can Do About It," she reviews some of the figures
often cited to illustrate the cost of illiteracy. She
41
points out, for example:
Forty percent of adults with yearly incomes under
$5,000 are functionally incompetent, and the yearly
cost in welfare programs and unemployment
compensation due to illiteracy is estimated at $6
billion.
We spend $6.6 billion to keep 700,000
illiterates in jail. Illiterates constitute about
60 percent of our prison population— and 85 percent
of the youngsters who appear in juvenile court are
disabled readers.
The Department of Education, Office of Vocational
and Adult Education provides additional statistics. A
newsletter article notes:
Over one-third of the mothers receiving Aid-to
Families with Dependent Children (A.F.D.C.) are
illiterate. Americans who do not complete high
school earn about two-thirds the salary of those who
do. Those who do not complete grade school earn
even less— about half as much as those completing
high school.
According to the literacy "crisis” literature,
business and industry as well as the taxpayer bear the
cost of functionally illiterate workers. An article in
the Wall Street Journal gives examples of low
productivity, costly mistakes, work that must be
corrected and done over, and industrial accidents that
have supposedly resulted from workers’ inability to
manage basic reading, writing, and computing. For
instance, a manufacturer of cranes and aerial lifts
estimated that one worker's inability to read a ruler
42
cost the company $700 in wasted material on a single
morning and that the company had to spend a million
dollars to rectify mistakes caused by employees not
entering correct five digit codes when electronically
monitoring the manufacture and inventory of parts.
Continental Bank in Chicago, like many other companies,
has had to offer its own courses in typing and basic
English in order to fill their need for clerical workers.
When educators and other crusaders for literacy cite the
"cost of illiteracy" figures, it is generally to call for
greater expenditures for education, literacy programs,
and job training programs. The argument is usually one
of "pay now or pay later." Taxpayers, including
businesses and industries, are told they can either spend
now on education or pay later for unemployment, welfare,
crime, and lost productivity. Those associated with the
Reagan administration, including Mrs. Bush, are in the
somewhat awkward position of having to support decreased
government spending while advocating expanded programs.
The solution has been to call for a volunteer effort.
Business and industry are encouraged to contribute both
direct funding and in-kind services. The heart of this
effort, however, has been to solicit individual
volunteers to act as literacy tutors. Through
organizations such as Literacy Volunteers of America,
43
Laubauch International, and public libraries, as well as
through churches and community groups, any literate
person may receive training in teaching reading and then
be paired with an illiterate adult who wants to receive
one-to-one tutoring.
In my own experience of working with
representatives of such organizations, the staff members
are exceptionally sincere, dedicated, and hardworking,
and as Ms. Bush persuasively illustrated in a speech to
USC alumni women, the tutoring experience can be a very
rewarding one for both the tutor and the tutee. On the
other hand, it is not hard to imagine the difficulties
both logistieally and philosophically of bringing
together in any great numbers, for example, generally
upper-middle-class USC alumni women and, perhaps,
single-parent minority women receiving AFDC, or
unemployed, inner-city youth.
We will return presently to volunteerism and other
solutions to the "problem of illiteracy," but our initial
concern is with how the problem is framed since that
framework shapes public response. The statistics cited
by the Department of Education and similar figures imply
remarkably simplistic cause and effect relationships
between literacy and income, employment, crime, and
productivity. Such statistics strongly suggest that the
44-
forty percent of adults with incomes under $5000 said to
be functionally incompetent are condemned to poverty
primarily because they lack functional literacy. These
figures would have us believe that the 700,000
illiterates in jail are there largely because they cannot
read. The Wall Street Journal article would lead us to
imagine that the million dollars spent by one company to
rectify mistakes is essentially a literacy problem,
attributable to workers' inability to copy a five digit
number. However, all of these statistics certainly
invite more complex interpretations.
The error in associating illiteracy directly with
dollar costs either to individuals or the society
results, again, from abstracting literacy as only one
factor in the social context. A further set of
satistics reprinted in the same Department of Education
newsletter cited above give a more revealing view of the
complicated relationships between literacy and
employment. The paragraph originally printed in the
Washington Post. August 7, 1981 states:
Since 1964 the U.S. has spent $65 billion in job
training programs for unskilled youth. Yet, of the
nation’s 8 million unemployed, 4 to 6 million are
estimated by the U.S. Labor Department analysts to
lack the basic skills of communications, personal
relations, motivation, self-confidence, reading and
calculating that would, enable employers to train
45
them for jobs that will open up in the next few
years.
Here, quite clearly, literacy is only one skill
associated closely with the analysts1 and employers'
perceptions of how well individuals communicate with
others, how they get along with co-workers, how hard they
are willing to work, and how self-confident they appear.
Literacy is associated with trainability. In terms of
jobs that are currently available and those that may open
up in the next few years, it is arguable that it is this
quality of trainability as perceived by the employer that
is more valued than the ability to read, write, and
calculate.
On the one hand, it is fashionable to argue that we
live in an information age that requires increasingly
sophisticated literacy skills. In the Modern Language
Association volume, Literacy for Life: The Demand for
Reading and Writing, Ralph Tyler, director emeritus of
the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,
maintains that today "jobs requiring no schooling are few
in number, while tasks requiring at least a high school
education make up nearly two thirds of employment
opportunities" (198). In the same volume, an essay,
"Information Systems and Literacy," outlines a high tech
future with twenty-five million workers equipped with
"electronic workstations" by 1990. The author of this
4.6
article, Paul Strassmann, the vice president in charge of
"strategic planning" for the Xerox Corporation, is
perhaps not entirely disinterested in encouraging such a
trend and exhorting educators to produce "electronically
literate" graduates (121).
let a closer examination of the labor market does not
necessarily indicate that what America needs is large
numbers of better educated workers. Hunter and Harman in
Adult Illiteracy in the United States point out that US
companies are increasingly relocating overseas where
workers with very little education, often women, produce
everything from clothing and musical instruments to
complicated electronics equipment and automobiles. The
attraction of these workers is not superior literacy
skills but the fact that their labor can be bought for
low wages. Within the US the greatest increases in new
jobs are in the service industries with a growing demand
for servers in fast-food restaurants, maids in hotels,
aides in hospitals, maintenance workers, etc.— minimum
wage jobs that do not require advanced skills but cannot
be shipped out of the country (though, in fact,
undocumented workers from other countries may fill many
of these jobs for comparably low wages).
While high technology does require a pool of some
very well-educated workers, it also contributes to the
47
rapid "deskilling" of many jobs for the masses. The
movement through management of production processes and
automation to reduce each worker’s role to the repetition
of a simple task is, of course, well documented. Workers
can easily be trained for these jobs and are essentially
interchangeable since any worker can master the simple
routines associated with any particular phase of the
production process. Richard Ohmann in College English
traces the deskilling of work historically into the
"computer age." In an apt critique of Strassmann, he
points out that most of the "electronic workstations" he
sees are operated by relatively low paid clrks in travel
agencies, banks, and his own English department; by
checkers at grocery markets and by fast-food servers who
need only to push pictures of hamburgers and fries while
the machine adds up the order and figures the change due
the customer.
Geraldine Clifford, in the Review of Educational
Research, also offers a historical perspective on the
relationships between literacy, schooling, and work and
suggests that many young workers are, in fact,
overeducated for their jobs leading to boredom,
dissatisfaction, and high turnover rates (4-89)* While
the manufacturer cited in the Wall Street Journal
attributes errors to workers’ inability to copy a five
4- 8
digit number correctly, it seems equally plausible that
mistakes could be the result of inattention and a lack of
involvement in electronically controlled production
processes. Hunter and Harman, citing a 1983 study by the
Center for Public Resources, indicate that the majority
of employers feel their employees generally have the
basic skills needed for their jobs (xi).
Complaints about lack of basic skills may actually
reflect employer dissatisfaction not with reading,
writing, and calculating abilities but with those more
nebulous characteristics like personal relations and
motivation catalogued in the Department of Labor
statement previously quoted. Frederick Erickson,an
anthropologist, relates an illustrative narrative.
Erickson in 1965 was hired by a steel company to provide
on-the-job training for minority high school drop-outs.
The turn-over rate of young minority workers hired by the
company was quite high; of the 200 workers hired in a
two-year period most quit or were fired in less than six
months. Managers and foremen cited absenteeism and
inability to measure and cut steel orders correctly as
the major reasons for high turnover of minority workers.
Erickson discovered that all but three of the trainees he
worked with had either no trouble with reading work
orders and cutting steel or learned very quickly. On the
49
other hand, race relations in the factory were strained.
White foremen criticized trainees "...for talking
unintelligibly and for standing in what looked to
supervisors like lazy postures while working on their
machines. Foremen would come by and say things like,
'Get moving you — — — . We're not paying you to — —
— ." Some trainees quit; others stayed; all perceived
their bosses and fellow workers as "racist." Lack of
reading and measuring skills provide a more acceptable
explanation of high minority worker turn-over, but they
were not, however, the source of the problem (526).
In a another on-the-job training program currently
being implemented, the University of Arizona is working
with assembly-line employees in a Hewlitt-Paekard plant
who are learning English as a second language. After a
careful analysis of language use on the job,
teacher-researchers have designed an English program for
workers that focuses on the pragmatic as well as the
lexical and syntactic aspects of communication. However,
like Erickson, program planners and teachers find that
the perceptions of managers and foreman play an important
role in worker success. On-the-job training in
communications and personal relations for managers and
foremen as well as for the workers has been included as
an essential component of the program (Skinner).
50
Once again functional language skills alone are
neither the sole source nor the solution to problems in
the workplace. Specific reading and writing skills are
developed and displayed in the context of the physical
environment of the workplace, the physical work to be
accomplished there, and the social situation. Workers
are judged not by the skills they may possess in some
abstract sense but by how these skills are displayed and
perceived on the job. This display is to some extent
culturally conditioned and is certainly
situation-dependent. In advance of actual employment,
credentials may signal to prospective employers that an
individual is suitable for job training.
When Tyler in Literacy for Life states that
two-thirds of jobs today require at least a high school
education it is unclear whether he is referring to some
cluster of knowledge and skills acquired in high school
or to a high school diploma. When adults are surveyed
about their basic needs they rarely put the need for
greater literacy above needs for housing, child care, or
employment, nor, according to a number of research
studies cited by Hunter and Harman, do they attribute
improvement in employment to increased skills (xvii and
15). However, adults recognized that a diploma is
51
valuable. Hunter and Harman reinforce the perception
that credentials are important (xi, xvi, 19-21).
Credentials serve a gate-keeping function, sorting
workers for scarce jobs. Oxenham, Clifford, Ohmann, and
Harvey Graff, among others, trace the association of
literacy with schooling and a disciplined work force.
Graff quotes R.P. Dore1s study of Tokugawa, Japan in
which Dore concluded:
But what does widespread literacy do for a
developing country? At the very least it
constitutes a training in being trained. The man
who has in childhood submitted to some processes of
disciplined and conscious learning is more likely to
respond to further training, be it in a conscript
army, in a factory, or at lectures arranged by his
village agricultural association (258).
Scribner and Cole in their intensive study of the Vai
people conclude that many of the cognitive effects
previously associated with literacy are instead are a
result of the structures and methods of schooling. In
the United States a high school diploma is at least an
indication of regular attendance, conformity to a time
schedule, and adherence to rules. It further suggests
acceptance or strategies to cope with middle-class values
and with cultural, ethnic, and racial biases.
52
Functional Literacy in Perspective
All of this is not to say, of course, that literacy
has no functional value. We are only beginning to
investigate how reading and writing actually function
outside of schools in homes, communities, and workplaces,
but even early studies demonstrate that literacy plays an
important role in how Americans in a wide variety of
settings accomplish activities in their daily lives.
(See, for example, Heath, Anderson and Stokes, Mikulecky,
Odell and Goswami). It is clear, however, that
functionality must be viewed broadly from the
perspectives of the participants' own goals. In thinking
of the limits of a functional view of literacy, we may
use the word "limit" in two ways.
First, in the way that we transmit literacy to
children and adults, we may in fact limit both the skills
they develop and how those skills are applied. Learners
working alone on "reading comprehension" tasks have
little opportunity to experience how reading and writing
may actually be used to accomplish real purposes. Without
any larger context or framework for learning, not
surprisingly, students may fail to master even decoding
skills or the mechanics of writing. Because of a step
model of learning that insists that students must learn
53
the basics before they can go on to more global reading
and writing activities, students in remedial classes and
inferior schools find it increasingly difficult to
discover what information they might bring to bear or
what strategies they might use to solve the problems
presented in isolation by their teachers. Because
inventories of functional literacy competencies tend to
emphasize passive literacy and simply responding to
demands made by bureaucratic hierarchies, the skills that
are developed do little to help learners cope with the
real conflicts in their lives.
So, on the one hand, we may unintentionally limit the
very skills we hoped to develop. On the other hand, we
may fail to limit, as we should in all conscience,
extravagant claims for literacy. Merely teaching people
to read and write will not create more jobs or better
housing or day care centers or clinics. It seems no
accident that literacy should become an issue of great
concern under a conservative administration. It is
relatively non-controversial since no one is against
literacy. It is convenient to select illiteracy out of
the matrix of factors that prevent individuals from
enjoying the "good life.” To some extent those "victims"
of the "disease" of illiteracy can be blamed for their
own deficiency since all citizens supposedly have equal
54-
access to public education. Volunteer organizations,
essentially charities, are urged as the solution for
those worthy illiterates who somehow fell through the
cracks of the educational system but are willing to admit
their disease. Those who do not step forward to be
tutored are assumed to be either confirmed in their
ignorance, too ashamed to ask for help, or simply
uninformed as to how literacy could improve their lives.
A media campaign is suggested to provide motivation and
information. Again, this is not to denigrate volunteer
literacy programs which do benefit many individuals.
However, all adult basic education programs in the
country, programs both public and private, are estimated
to serve only 2 to 4- million people, providing a "second
chance" for the 60 million adults who did not complete
high school and the 23 million said to be functionally
illiterate (Hunter and Harman 58) .
Ethically, we can make only modest claims for
literacy and keep in mind its limitations. Drawing on my
experience with the Model Literacy Project to be analyzed
in Part II, I would conclude in rather circular fashion
that literacy is only useful if it is useful. While much
is made of the masses’ need to learn to "delay
gratification," and while we may point out the long-term
effects of a particular act of literacy— writing a novel,
55
for example— literacy generally operates in frameworks
that bring short-term as well as long-range rewards.
These rewards include group membership; the satisfaction
of needs to communicate, comprehend, or create knowledge;
increased status; entertainment; immediate employment.
Adults seek to use literacy skills in new ways when they
perceive a need to do so. Needs arise in the context of
their relationships to other individuals, groups, and
institutions. The needs of learners can only be revealed
in dialogue and for dialogue to occur there must be a
presumption that they "know" their own life experience.
This does not mean the process is a simple one, learners
simply listing needs as a shopping list that may be
filled by a teacher. Suggestions come from both teacher
and learner of activities, tasks, skills that might be
useful. Dialogue does mean, however, that the teacher
does not persist with tasks that learners reject as
uninteresting or irrelevant on the grounds that certain
skills are inherently functional or will be needed, "in
the future." Richard Ohmann writes that we "...demand
that all kids act out the morality play of literacy
instruction, from which the moral drawn by most will be
that in this meritocracy they do not merit much" (687).
We run the risk in adult literacy programs, including job
56
training, of simply underscoring this moral for those who
did not learn it well enough the first time.
57
CHAPTER TWO: A MEMBER OF THE CLUB
Liberal humanists have long rejected the no-frills,
plain-wrap brand of reading and writing purveyed by those
with narrowly functional views of literacy. Humanistic
solutions to the "literacy crisis" include the call for a
movement "beyond the basics," a call to "return to
excellence" in education. Educational reformers who take
a broad view of literacy often speak metaphorically of
becoming literate as becoming a member of a "club" and
equate literacy with shared cultural knowledge and
practices. While functional literacy focuses on fairly
specific goals attempting to meet the most basic needs of
learners in daily life, liberal humanists seek to do
more, to stress the role of literacy in human development
and in preparing individuals for full participation in a
common culture.
Educators are by no means united, however, on how
the boundaries of a common culture ought to be defined,
how full membership is acquired, or what the costs and
benefits of membership might be. The views of educators
in the liberal, humanist tradition may be seen as ranging
along a spectrum from those with the most limited
perspective who equate literacy with a narrowly defined
version of traditional Western culture to those who count
58
as club members all who are able to use reading and
writing flexibly in contemporary life.
Though the club metaphor is common in humanist views
of literacy, the implications of this metaphor are
largely unexamined. I find it a dangerous metaphor to
the extent that it highlights literacy as a key feature
of group identity rather than regarding it as only one
factor, and often a minor one, when related to more
powerful determiners such as class and race. The liberal
humanist views I wish to critique in this chapter are
more difficult to generalize than those of functional
literacy which are often clearly spelled out in national
and international programs. Consequently, I will examine
three representative versions of the "literacy club" that
indicate the range from the most limited traditional
perspective to a more flexible view and that
significantly influence educational programs including
the model adult literacy project analyzed in Part II.
The first, the most conservative version of the
literacy club, represented in an essay in the Modern
Language Association volume Literacy for Life, sets high
standards for membership in the club but claims equally
rich benefits for "full literacy." The second position
developed by E.D. Hirsch represents a middle ground, not
pressing for especially high standards or promising that
59
literacy will cure all ills, but maintaining in seemingly
objective fashion informed by cognitive psychology the
necessity of "cultural literacy." Hirsch posits that
reading and writing the texts most valued by the culture
is simply not possible without the shared background of
club membership. The third version of the literacy club
that I will consider, that of Frank Smith, appears to be
the most eclectic view including in the club all who can
make use of reading and writing for their own purposes in
daily life. Smith would, perhaps, not usually be
considered with the liberal humanists advocating a view
of literacy tied closely to a common cultural heritage.
However, Smith's earlier books on reading and more recent
work on writing and literacy, widely read by educators,
refute the view of reading and writing as mechanical,
functional skills and perpetuate the metaphor associating
literacy with club membership. Although Smith’s work
takes a wide view of the uses and benefits of literacy
and focuses on how all children may be inducted into the
"club," the kinds of classroom activities he envisions
are more narrowly culturally determined than many readers
and, perhaps Smith himself, seem to realize.
What assumptions does each version of the "literacy
club" make about what constitutes literacy and how one
becomes literate? What are the actual costs and__________
60
benefits? I want to argue that liberal perspectives on
literacy education, while attempting to go beyond the
limits of narrowly functional views, are themselves
limited to the degree that they too abstract literacy
activities from the social contexts in which they are
practiced. As a result, proponents of literacy as both
the legacy and the vehicle of a common culture too often
underestimate or obscure the requirements and processes
that insure membership in the "literacy clubs" to which
they themselves belong. Along with proponents of
functional literacy, they may overestimate the power of
literacy practices alone to improve individual lives.
While in this view literacy is seen as an agent for
change, change may be presented as operatng in only one
direction— a movement of individuals from less to more,
from outside to inside, from a limited repertoire of
literacy practices to a broader one. What is less often
recognized is, again, that changes in literacy practices
necessarily involve not only changes in individuals but
in social systems. Change seen essentially as the
accommodation or assimilation of individuals to the
interests of the "common" culture instead of promoting
greater social equality may, in fact, confirm the unequal
status of groups already marginalized by class, race,
gender, ethnicity.
61
Insiders and Outsiders
The view of literacy education as the key to full
membership in the "club'1 of traditional Western culture
presented by Edwin Delattre in an essay titled "The
Insiders" is, I believe, significant because it appears
in the only volume on literacy published by the massive
Modern Language Association. In addition, Delattre, a
former college president and director of the National
Humanities Faculty, represents in their strongest form
the arguments that underlie current calls for a "return
to excellence" in education embodied, for example, in
Mortimer Adler's widely circulated Paideia Proposal or
more specifically in California’s most recent Model
Curriculum Standards. Delattre's essay begins;
All humanity is made up of two classes of people;
the insiders and the outsiders. The insiders of the
world have the power to learn their way about and to
gain access to the meaning and significance of ideas
and events. The outsiders are eternally strangers
to such meaning.
The fundamental bond that unites progressive
generations of insiders is language and the
knowledge and skills that language delivers. The
key to getting inside is literacy, the ability to
read and write and, with it, to listen and speak.
(52)
According to Delattre, the insiders are able to
distinguish "things that are sensible and clear...from
62
things that are truly confusing or perplexing." They are
able "...to identify worthwhile problems and set out to
solve them" (52-53). They can read critically texts
Delattre identifies as truly worth reading and write
"with a grasp of language adequate to say just what one
means" (56). Most importantly, they can, in Delattre!s
view, think clearly and logically.
Delattre's premises clearly are rooted in "grand
dichotomy" theories of literacy and in a view of meaning
as autonomous and determinate. Literacy here equals the
reading by individuals of extended texts judged to have
merit as part of a traditional canon and writing marked
by "clarity" and "eloquence" that demonstrates knowledge
of both the content and forms of this traditional body of
work. Literacy in this sense is presented as a "good
thing" in and of itself. Delattre assumes that ideas and
events have single, determinate meanings that are the
property of insiders and that literacy is the key that
can unlock these meanings. Literacy is synonymous with
rationality.
Delattre cites as an ideal for education Mark Van
Doren’s observation that "...a genuinely educated person
is one who could refound his or her own civilization"
(52). This view presents "civilization" as coherent and
whole, and the reproduction of the "civilized" world as a.
63
primary goal. While certainly a major purpose of
education is preserving and transmitting the existing
values, knowledge, and skills thought to be central to a
principled, democratic society, this is not the same as
simply reproducing "civilization,'’ especially
civilization viewed narrowly as a static version of
traditional Western culture. This view fails to recognize
how the structures of civilization may work against the
interests of many. The humanist's cultural heritage
model of literacy education is limited too when it fails
to acknowledge how other versions of
"culture"— -scientific and technological, non-Western, and
pop culture, for example— both complement and challenge
traditional views in the liberal arts.
Literacy education proceeding from the cultural
heritage model argues for literacy as a powerful agent of
change capable of transforming "outsiders" excluded by
"deprived backgrounds" into insiders, full participants
in the culture. However, proponents of a narrowly
conceived cultural heritage model seem to look for change
only in the sense that others will become more like
themselves, with little sense that culture is constantly
negotiated and recreated. Writers of articles like "The
Insiders" always assume that they are, indeed, the
insiders, members of a club whose boundaries they_________
64 -
themselves define. Delattre demonstrates his membership
by the style, structure, and logic of his writing which
is clearly a product of the Western essayist tradition
and by his allusions to Shakespeare, John Stuart Mill,
the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King, The
Sermon on the Mount, and other persons and texts. The
members of the club in making themselves central and
inside, of necessity see others as marginal and outside.
The centrality of insiders is justified on the basis of
the knowledge and skills they possess. This knowledge and
these skills are presented as neutral and available to
all, not, as Brian Street points out in a recent
analysis, Literacy in Theory and Practice, as the
privileging of the insiders' ”... own academic
establishment, their own work practice within it, their
own values and rules” (38).
These practices may indeed be valuable. The
difficulty is, again, in abstracting literacy practices,
bodies of knowledge, and ways of thinking from their
historical and social contexts with little consideration
of the political, economic, and social circumstances
under which specific literacy activities arose and under
which they are practiced today. To give only one
example, the reading and discussion of works of
literature is certainly a cornerstone of a liberal________
65
education. However, the extent to which individuals
engage in this practice is not solely a matter of choice.
The kinds of resources available in terms of instructor
and, often, student time, classroom space, materials
such as paper and books vary greatly from the university
to the community college, from the urban junior high
classroom to the adult job training program, from the
middle-class family to the single-parent family receiving
public assistance.
And yet, from relatively privileged positions,
insiders may view the problem as primarily one of
motivation, of not being properly "invited" inside.
Delattre benevolently suggests:
The principal tasks of educators and families are to
show that there is an inside and an outside, to
enable outsiders to recognize themselves for what
they are, and to invite them warmly and humbly to
the inside.
For youngsters and others who are outsiders because
of deprived backgrounds or willful refusal to learn,
invitations must be even more engaging, since the
admission even to oneself that one is an outsider is
painful and threatening. (53)
However, Freire has powerfully deconstructed this
"benevolent" position. He argues that we cannot believe
that outsiders freely choose their own marginality and
the deprivation associated with marginal status. In
fact, they are not beings "outside" a social structure;
66
they exist very much within the social structure. Freire
says, ’ ’They are not 'beings outside of'; they are 'beings
for another'" ("Adult Literacy Process" 368). The
privileged position of the insiders depends to some
extent on the marginalization of "youngsters and others
of deprived backgrounds." Freire points out that
envisioning the illiterate or uneducated as located on
the fringe of society, we may see them as those who are
"sick" and need the "cure" of literacy (368). Certainly,
Delattre and others in the "war on illiteracy" suggest
the image of the illiterate as alcoholics or drug addicts
who must "recognize themselves for what they are" and
admit their outsider status before they can accept a
"humble" invitation to be made whole again. The "willful
refusal" of some to participate in an educational process
that is in fact painful and threatening for many
youngsters and adults is seen by Delattre as a refusal
merely to learn that supposedly neutral bundle of
knowledge and skills associated with literacy.
But as Freire reiterates:
Therefore, the solution to their problem is not to
become "beings inside of," but men freeing
themselves; for in reality they are not marginal to
the structure, but oppressed men within it.
Alienated men, they cannot overcome their dependency
by 'incorporation' into the very structure
responsible for their dependency. (368)
67
The cultural heritage model of literacy education in
its most lofty versions ignores the social structures in
which literacy is embedded. High culture may be
presented as somehow outside of the social context, as
timeless and universal, as representing absolute values
of beauty, truth, and justice. There is no recognition
of the social construction of knowledge and culture, the
way in which Delattre1s "progressive generations of
insiders" have shaped and been shaped by the practices
and content of what is identified as high culture. The
"return to excellence," raising "standards" without
providing books, adequately trained teachers, or
reasonable ratios of teachers to students, and without
considering how traditional values and practices may work
against the interests of those already excluded from full,
participation, ensures failure for many, perpetuating
their unequal status.
Cultural Literacy as Necessity
In an argument more sophisticated than Delattre1s,
E.D. Hirsch recognizes that literacy is never neutral.
He asserts that "Literacy is not just a formal skill; it
is also a political decision" ("Cultural Literacy" 185).
68
He defines the problem in this way:
The big political question that has to be decided
first of all is whether we want a broadly literate
culture that unites our cultural fragments enough to
allow us to write to one another and read what our
fellow citizens have written. Our traditional
Jeffersonian answer has been yes. But even if that
political decision remains the dominant one, as I
very much hope, we still face the much more
difficult political decision of choosing the
contents of cultural literacy. (167)
While Hirsch acknowledges that it would be difficult
to specify exactly what pieces of information one needs
to know to participate in a common culture, the general
outlines of what he calls ’ ’cultural literacy” are
recognizable. Hirsch essentially defines cultural
literacy as the "canonical knowledge” that literate
people share. He writes in the English Journal. "It is a
census of cultural and natural information that is often
alluded to without explanation in serious talks, books,
and articles” (4-8). Hirsch, like Delattre, uses the
metaphor of club membership to talk about this shared
knowledge. He maintains:
Once we are conscious of the fact of cultural
literacy, and of the importance to disadvantaged
people of our not keeping a knowledge of its finite
contents the exclusive secret of the well educated,
perhaps some excluded members of our society will be
more encouraged to become members of the literacy
club. (48)
69
Unlike Delattre, Hirsch does not argue that cultural
literacy will make one smarter, more critical, more
logical, or that cultural literacy, as Delattre writes,
"is just more fun, more joyful than being illiterate"
(54-) • Hirsch is more "scientific" in his argument. He
bases his thinking on extensive research, including his
own, on reading and on the evaluation of writing. This
is the research that tells us that reading is not simply
a matter of extracting information from texts, that
reading instead involves an interaction between reader
and text, and that the ease or difficulty of a particular
text is not solely the result of features of the text
itself but is substantially influenced by the amount of
background information the reader can bring to bear.
Similarly, the effectiveness of any particular piece of
writing depends on the writer’s ability to project what
readers are likely to know already about the generic
conventions and the subject matter of the discourse.
Hirsch argues then that the current literacy problem is
not the result of a lack of basic skills, of specific
knowledge about how to read and write, but a lack of the
shared background knowledge that enables readers to read
the most common texts produced in their culture. This
cultural literacy is not merely a concomitant of
70
literacy, it is a necessity. In the absence of cultural
literacy, one cannot be fully literate.
Hirsch is certainly correct to move away from the
idea of reading and writing as formal,
content-indifferent skills. In practice, in working with
young adults in the Model Literacy Project we found, as
Hirsch would predict, that, in fact, most could pronounce
the words on the front page of a newspaper but varied
widely in the amount of knowledge they could bring to
bear on particular stories. Some were recent immigrants
from El Salvador; others had never heard of this country
or the events there. Some had extensive dealings with
the courts or the welfare system but not the conventional
terminology of government or economics. All had
experience with schooling but few were aware of the
concept or workings of a school board.
As Hirsch maintains, reading and writing are not
"content-indifferent.” However, reading and writing are
also not ”context-indifferent.” Hirsch!s model for
reading still basically posits an individual reader
interacting with a single text. He cites Richard
Anderson’s experiment in which two groups of readers, one
American and one Indian, read two similar accounts of
weddings— one about an American wedding, one about an
Indian wedding. As expected, Americans read with greater
71
speed and accuracy of comprehension the account of the
American wedding. Indians performed similarly in reading
about the Indian wedding. Both had difficulties with the
less familiar account ('’Cultural Literacy” 164-165).
This is reading in a very specific context, that of a
university experiment, with a very specific goal or
purpose, that of reading as quickly as possible with the
greatest comprehension measured by accurate recall of
specific information and details from the text.
All readers in this context seem to be reading under
the same controlled circumstances. Each reader brings a
finite amount of information to bear on the text. The
results of this interaction are measurable i.n numbers
representing each reader’s speed and accuracy. In this
seemingly neutral context, the reader's output can be
increased by increasing the input, the amount of
background information. Knowledge is something that can
be added to the individual mind. But this experimental,
test-taking situation is only one very specific, limited
context for reading. Reading, of course, occurs in many
different contexts with many different purposes. When
reading is not a test, for example, when adults figure
out directions for a new piece of equipment or when a
parent reads a picture book to a child, the physical
context, oral language, and social interaction may all
72
support reading. The context for reading determines what
counts as knowledge and how that knowledge may be brought
to bear.
It seems unwise to take the experimental, test-taking
situation as the paradigm of reading and to advocate on
this basis a particular approach to literacy in
education. While reading in school is very often a test,
it is not merely a test of background knowledge, speed,
and accuracy, somehow objectively measured. The norms
for what counts as successful reading and writing in
classrooms are socially established and reflect social
values. As noted earlier, Hirsch certainly recognizes
the political nature of literacy and schooling in the
initial decision to promote literacy at all and in
further decisions about what to teach. However, he does
seem to see knowledge and information as autonomous in
the sense that they can be catalogued and then packaged
in a curriculum to be given to school children and, at
least, made available to "disadvantaged” adults.
Certainly Hirsch would agree that this could not be done
mechanically; that curriculum must be creative,
imaginative, and flexible; that knowledgeable,
enthusiastic teachers must present material in ways that
will engage children's attention and minds.
73
Given these favorable circumstances, those who argue
for cultural literacy seem to assume basically that what
is explicitly taught in school is what is learned and
that this teaching and learning is essentially an
additive process. However, this does not take into
account the point that much of what is learned in school
is a function of the context and the process of schooling
as well as the contents of instruction. Woodward,
Harste, and Burke in their study of early literacy
acquisition indicate that children in our society
surrounded by print come to school already knowing a good
deal about how print works and what it is for. In the
classroom they learn new lessons about what constitutes
appropriate uses of reading and writing, and their own
relationship to print— I am a good reader; I don't know
how to write; etc. These lessons are often learned
implicitly because of the way time and space are managed,
the way materials are allocated, and the way activities
are structured. They are learned at least partly as a
result of the kinds of relationships demonstrated to be
appropriate among students and between teacher and
students.
My own study, discussed in Chapter Five, comparing
teacher-led small group discussions of student writing in
a university freshman writing program with similar
IK
discussions in the adult literacy project indicated that
an unstated purpose of such discussions is to demonstrate
and practice ways of interacting with and talking about
print that are deemed appropriate in an academic setting.
This is not to say that content makes no difference or to
go back to the argument Hirsch refutes that any content
will do to teach skills. The content of the lesson in
elementary school, a freshman writing program, or a
literacy project is also part of the scene. Of course,
it makes a difference whether the teacher assigns or
accepts as the student's choice an essay on Hamlet or a
report on the best kind of skis to buy. But it makes a
difference as only one element of the total scene. Simply
changing the content of schooling will not substantially
change the powerful lessons students learn from the
context including lessons about what counts as knowledge
and what knowledge is for.
I would argue that much of the content proponents of
cultural literacy argue for is, in fact, still very much
a part of the school curriculum. Proponents of cultural
literacy overestimate the diversification of curriculum
in the 60's and 70's. True, we saw the rise of sports
literature and film classes as high school electives and,
more true, we saw large segments of the student
population shunted into remedial classes for drill and
75
skill work. But Hirsch himself argues that in order to
read and write one does not have to be an expert in the
many areas of knowledge central to the culturally
literate. A passing acquaintance with the key figures of
mythology, an outline of the events of the Civil War, a
sketch of the major provisions of the United States
constitution, etc. are enough to allow one to understand
the new information in what one reads and hears. Most
school children today are still, in fact, "exposed" to
that information. Their textbooks while "watered down"
still "cover" much of the territory of the traditional
curriculum and their teachers, often hard-working,
well-organized, and committed, still teach much of what
they themselves have been taught.
Somehow much of this information does not stick, does
not "take." I would argue that one strong reason why it
does not is because we repeatedly fail to link this
content to what students already know, to their lived
experiences in homes, workplaces, and communities or to
provide classroom contexts in which students and teachers
can negotiate both the nature of this content and how it
may be learned and applied. Hirsch writes, "One
reassuring feature of our responsibilities as makers of
culture is the implicit and automatic character of most
canonical cultural knowledge; we get it through the
76
pores" ("Cultural Literacy" 166). As Shirley Brice
Heath's study of working-class children in the Carolina's
and other studies of class, schooling, and disadvantage
demonstrate, children come to school already marked with
a particular position within the social system. The
school evaluates that knowledge "we get through our
pores" and our ways of using language, our behavior, and
ways of relating to others. "The implicit and automatic
character of most canonical cultural knowledge" can only
be reassuring to those whose knowledge and practice are
validated by the school. Since they designate themselves
as the makers of culture, it is no wonder that they make
it in their own image. While Hirsch repeatedly stresses
that he is not advocating a "core curriculum," a common
course of study for every student, the examples he gives
ofthe knowledge necessary for cultural literacy sound
fairly traditional. Along with other cultural heritage
models of literacy, change seems to operate in only one
direction with minorities, women, the economically
disadvantaged, and other groups of unequal status
assimilated to the common culture rather than in
conflict.
However, for these groups and others schooling may be
experienced not as assimilation but as alienation.
Because knowledge is conceived of and taught as something
77
relatively static, possessed and applied by individuals
working alone, the possibility of social action, of
negotiation is minimized. Each individual is measured
and found wanting, and this individual evaluation is
repeated over and over again. Hirsch is right to argue
that knowing "how to" read and write is not sufficient
for full literacy but neither is an education that seeks
to transmit, as a body of knowledge, the contents and
forms of mainstream culture. Reading and writing are
also processes; literacy is an activity, a social
practice. In order for literacy to "make sense" for
those whose knowledge and experience is not automatically
validated by the school, they must have opportunities to
engage in literacy practices that meet their own
negotiated needs and purposes.
Joining the Club
Use of the member of the club metaphor for literacy
is not limited to those in the humanities and the liberal
arts. This metaphor is widely current in education and
has been especially popularized by the Canadian writer,
Frank Smith. Smith writes from the perspectives of
linguistics and education without the influence, true
especially in Hirsch’s case, of a strong, scholarly
background in literature and literary theory. Smith's
78
books and articles are familiar to many teachers, and he
is much in demand as a guest speaker at gatherings of
educators. Smith's views of language and literacy might
in some ways be thought of as "functional” in that
throughout his work he stresses that the value of
literacy and of language itself is not in some abstract
property but in use. However, Smith's view of the "uses"
to which literacy may contribute is a very broad and
flexible one. His work on reading is often cited by
those who wish to refute claims that reading is a skill
that can be broken down and taught to children in
discrete bits. Smith stresses the potentialities of
literacy, the creative and imaginative as well as the
"practical" uses of literacy, the way children may use
literacy as part of their continuous quest "to create
worlds" in which they live ("The Creative Achievement of
Literacy" 152).
Smith seems to belong to a slightly different
literacy club from Hirsch and Delattre. Unlike Delattre
who focuses on the supposed consequences of membership
and Hirsch who stresses the contents of knowledge needed
for admission, Smith examines essentially how one becomes
a member. This process is especially well outlined in
the article "Reading Like a Writer." Smith begins with
the point made very clear by sociolinguists like William
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Labov that children acquire the language of the groups to
which they belong. Smith points out that, at least
initially, there are "no admission requirements"; adults
"do not expect children to be experts in advance, nor do
they anticipate failure" (562). However, Smith notes:
They (children) do not learn to talk like everyone
they hear speaking, even those they may hear most.
They learn the language of the groups to which they
belong (or expect to belong) and resist the language
of the groups that they reject or from which they
are rejected. They learn, I want to say, from the
clubs to which they belong. (561)
How does this learning happen? I am simplifying
Smith’s argument here (already simplified from the vast
literature on language acquisition) but basically Smith
says we learn as "spontaneous apprentices" (a term
borrowed from Miller 1977) when another person "does
something on our behalf, something which we would like to
do, which we take for granted (561). Smith continues,
"In such circumstances, children learn from what they
overhear by ’listening like a talker.’ They do not
regard the language they learn from as something remote,
an attribute of others, but rather as something they
themselves would want and expect to do" (562).
No doubt one could critique the finer points of
\
Smith's account of first language acquisition, but that
would be to distract from Smith's general argument and
80
from mine. Let us accept that children do acquire the
language of the groups to which they belong and that this
is essentially a "natural” process in that it is fully
expected by the community and viewed as a calamity if by
some evere impairment acquisition does not occur.
Smith then extends by analogy this model of spoken
language acquisition to the acquisition of written
language. Again to somewhat oversimplify his argument,
Smith maintains that in order to read and write, one must
see oneself as a member of the club of those who read and
write, one must see oneself as the kind of person who is
literate. Given this engagement (Smith’s term), children
learn, as in spoken language, as spontaneous apprentices
in demonstrations of things "that learners will want to
do and will expect to be able to do" with written
language ("Creative Achievement” 151).
How do adults induct children into the club of
literate beings? Children learn incidentally observing
or participating in the use of print in their environment
for a variety of purposes, for example, as Smith says to
locate a hamburger stand or construct a story. School,
of course, plays a central role. Smith, stressing the
value of writing as well as reading, asserts:
Teachers have two critically important functions in
guiding children towards literacy: to demonstrate
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uses for writing and to help children learn writing
themselves. Put in other words, teachers must show
the advantages that membership in the club of
writers offers, and ensure that children can join.
("Reading Like a Writer" 564)
Smith provides an intriguing catalogue of some of the
many ways written language may be used in the classroom.
He suggests:
Writing is for stories to be read, books to be
published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted,
songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters
to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed,
cards to be sent, cartons to be labelled,
instructions to be followed, designs to be made,
recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged,
programs to be organized, excursions to be planned,
catalogs to be compared, entertainment guides to be
consulted, memos to be circulated, announcements to
be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be
displayed, cribs to be hidden, and diaries to be
concealed. Writing is for ideas, action,
reflection, and experience. It is not for having
your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed,
or your ability assessed. (566)
Smith’s club is in many ways more attractive than
more elite versions of the literacy club. The idea of
becoming literate as becoming a member of the club of
readers and writers who use reading and writing for a
variety of purposes was certainly picked up in the
USC-GGC Model Literacy Project. Unlike the return to
excellence, literacy elite, Smith does not seem to
suggest that students must be thoroughly versed in the
central texts of Western culture before they can even
begin to practice as club members. Smith seems more
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practical. In his catalogue, he includes what might be
thought of as both the functional and the cultural uses
of literacy. He is more aware of the claims of context
and recognizes that children do not learn curriculum, but
learn through demonstrations of spoken and written
language in use. Smith, then, seems to have a deeper
sense of how some children are excluded not merely
through lack of exposure to cultural literacy but through
repeated classroom demonstrations that present reading
and writing as "nonsensical, purposeless, or painful"
("Creative Achievement" 152).
However, even in Smith's terms, the "member of the
club" view of literacy is misleading. Smith cites as a
truism that "all children are born illiterate" (14-3) • He
sees literacy acquisition then as a developmental process
of acquiring insights into "what written language does
and how it does it in the particular cultures to which a
child belongs" (143). However, to say that all children
are born illiterate seems not quite useful. Newborns it
is true do not read and write, but they immediately are
situated in a literate world, and this is the case
whether they are born in a hospital in an American city
or in a remote village. The practices of the particular
groups to which they belong reflect larger international
and national patterns of the social stratification of
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knowledge and literacy. Anderson and Stokes in the same
volume. Awakening to Literacy, demonstrate in their study
of Anglo, Black, and Mexican-American families in San
Diego how literacy practices in each family are shaped
somewhat differently by the ways in which that family
interacts with the larger society through churches, the
workplace, the media, the school, and other institutions.
Teachers will be misled if they see becoming literate
as a movement from nothing to something, from an outside
to an inside, or as the filling up of an empty space.
Children are from the beginning embedded in a web of
social institutions, and their insights are mediated by
their relationships to those institutions. The question
is not merely to decide how they may be included in the
system but to ask what it would mean to change the space
they already occupy.
The problem becomes clearer if we look at the space
teachers themselves occupy in the social system of the
school. Smith certainly recognizes the handicaps teachers
face in trying to create classrooms in which literacy is
for "...stories to be read, books to be published, poems
to be recited, etc." In Writing and the Writer he points
to institutional inertia arising from the need to control
children; a mania for testing; and the inordinate amount
of time children spend listening (or not listening) as
84 -
opposed to actually talking, reading, or writing as some
of the reasons why schools are not good places for
literacy (207-210). He also asserts in regard to writing
the premise that teachers must write themselves in order
to teach writing ("Reading Like A Writer" 566).
What does it mean that teachers themselves, in
general, spend very little of their work day as writers
of the "...memos to be circulated... the announcements to
be posted...," the newspaper articles, the proposals, the
curriculum, the textbooks, the tests, the catalogues of
classes, the program evaluations, and the millions of
other pages of print that school systems run on? They
certainly are not forbidden to do so any more than auto
workers are forbidden to read literary theory or welfare
recipients to write books on economics. Teachers, in
fact, are sometimes invited to take on school related
writing tasks, but such tasks are generally not part of
their regular work. Each part of the educational
establishment has its own role— the university professor,
the publisher, the curriculum specialist, the
administrator, etc.
Are teachers, then, themselves "members of the
club?" Teachers in evaluating the club membership of
students often talk about whether or not children come
from cultural backgrounds or families that value__________
85
education and literacy, that think it is important. But
who writes and who reads is not merely a question of
"values;" it is closely related to roles within
institutions, especially job roles— who creates new
knowledge; who packages information for consumption; in
education, who makes decisions about curriculum, budget,
and school administration, and who implements those
decisions. For teachers to take a greater part in these
roles and the literacy practices associated with them
would demand a radical restructuring of the educational
system. The classroom has an advantage as a workplace
precisely because within it teachers and children need
not be required, for example, to sit at sewing machines
all day and produce ladies wear or work as farm laborers.
On the one hand, teachers and students are "free" to read
and write all day; on the other, because much of the
"real” reading and writing necessary to keep the
institution running is done elsewhere, they have little
need to do so.
Larry Cuban, a specialist in educational
administration at Stanford, in an article, ’ 'Policy and
Research Dilemmas in the Teaching of Reason: Unplanned
Designs" discusses how the ways in which classrooms are
organized, staffed, and governed mitigate against
critical thinking by both students and teachers. His
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observations apply equally well to the uses of literacy
in schools. To take only one example, the physical
arrangement of the classroom, the average teacher spends
6 or so hours a day in room only "slightly larger than
most living rooms in American homes" with perhaps 25 to
35 children (656). The arrangements that many who do
extended pieces of writing find helpful are missing— no
easy access to colleagues; resources; extended periods of
time to work; typewriters, computers, copying machines.
The demands of organizing, controlling, and instructing a
group of children in such a relatively small space for
many hours require that teachers use literacy for tasks
such record keeping, selecting and sometimes preparing
classroom materials, and relaying information to
students, but this structure does not encourage, for
example, the kind of reading and writing associated with
extensive research or ith theoretical speculation. Just
as teachers see many children as coming from cultures
that do not "value" literacy, teachers as a group are
often said not to "value" theory and research in
education.
Of course, this does not mean that it is impossible
for teachers and students to initiate change.
What teachers and students "value" and their uses of
literacy are not solely a function of the organization of
87
education and even if they were, that organization is not
monolithic. It does allow for some diversity, some
experimentation. Teachers and students as individuals
are embedded in a network of many other
institutions— political, economic, religious,
cultural-— besides the school, and this too leads to
diverse possibilities and diverse individual choices. I
do not level at Smith a charge he apparently resents,
that he is "impractical.” Teachers can make changes in
what they do in their own classrooms, and Smith's vision
of a class as a community of readers and writers at work
certainly seems a more promising course for literacy
development than that of a class of workbook completers.
Teachers need to know, however, that what is being
advocated involves more than a change in the content of
the classroom, the kinds of assignments made or materials
used. To change the literacy practices of teachers
themselves in schools would require a restructuring of
the organization of schools. Similarly, to turn the
traditional classroom into a workshop implies different
uses of time, space, and resources such as books, paper,
and equipment; and different relationships among students
and between students and teacher.
The kinds of literacy activities advocated by Smith
also need to be carefully thought through by teachers.
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The activities he catalogues have a tendency to seem very
ordinary, simply the normal things that members of the
literacy club do. Children who cannot quickly learn to
perform these tasks may be thought to be deficient or,
perhaps, from "culturally deprived" families. However,
classroom activities are certain to be shaped by the
teacher's own preferences and practices in regard to
stories,, books, poems, plays, songs, newspapers, letters,
jokes, etc. In reading Smith, I think, readers almost
invariably think of their own family practices, their own
reading and writing as a child, and the kinds of literacy
activities they share with their own children (or, more
likely, a rather romanticized version of all this).
Shirley Brice Heath, again, demonstrates ways that
teachers, generally middle-class town dwellers in her
study, replicate their family practices in their
classrooms. In another example, Gook-Gumperz and
Micheals illustrate how a teacher's conception of what
constitutes a story makes it difficult for black children
in a first grade classroom to participate in "sharing
time." Teachers in a workshop I taught worried that their
students could not write good Christmas stories that
included the sights, sounds, and smells of the
season— the gleaming lights, the crackling Yule logs, the
fragrant pine tree. Not recognizing the conventional
89
nature of the details in their own Christmas stories,
some teachers complained that their urban Hispanic
students in Southern California have no imagination.
Smith, himself, is not unaware, I think, of these
problems. The book, Awakening to Literacy, grew out of a
symposium he organized. In the introduction to the book,
he writes:
Before the University of Victoria Symposium, I
probably would have written that literacy was a
universal concern. I probably would also have said
that literacy was a universal good and that it was
to the advantage of every child to be taught to read
and write. Whatever I might still feel about the
value of literacy personally, I can no longer regard
the benefit of its acquisition as axiomatic.
Rather, the proposition that literacy is desirable
and worth the effort of learning has to be argued
and defended— especially, perhaps with the children
we so egocentrically expect to follow our example
(or our precept) in the development of literate
skills and interests, (v)
Certainly, this argument cannot be one-sided— with
theorists, researchers, and policy makers in offices
removed from classrooms and communities deciding which
version of Western culture, which set of literacy
practices are to form the core of literacy education.
Ideally, the argument would include many voices— of
children themselves, of parents, of teachers, of other
interested adults in the community. However, as the
participants of the University of Victoria Symposium
discovered, this dialogue is difficult even among peers
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and is immeasurably more difficult among people separated
by space and time and, often, even more deeply by class,
by race, by gender.
Conclusion
Literacy education, then, concerned as it is with the
values, knowledge, and practices of mainstream Western
culture makes and defends a number of assertions about
what kind of literacy is desirable, why it might be
acquired, and how. These assertions all have some
validity and are influential in the planning and
implementation of literacy programs, including, as will
be seen in Part II, the Model Literacy Project we
developed at USC. The proposition that Delattre merely
accepts as given, that literacy is essential to logical
thought and critical thinking, is being carefully
examined by researchers in a number of disciplines to
determine how, in what ways, and in what contexts this
might be true. It is certainly the case that logic,
critical thinking, imagination cannot be identified apart
from people and practices; they are understood as they
are displayed in culturally appropriate ways. And these
ways of thinking may be quite effective in solving the
problems societies set for themselves as, for example,
the contribution of "scientific” thinking to the rapid
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development of complex technologies in industrialized
countries. Knowledge and skills are equated with power
and status, and because the possession of knowledge and
skills particularly valued by the mainstream culture can
be advantageous to the individual, educators indeed feel
a responsibility to try to identify and teach what is
valued.
Hirsch suggests some of the types of cultural
knowledge that are valuable because they contribute to a
kind of mushrooming effect— the more one already knows
about a topic, the easier it is to learn more about it.
Particular texts, general bodies of knowledge are
privileged within any culture, and, as Hirsch points out,
if teachers must make choices anyway about what to teach,
it makes sense to often choose those texts and topics
with high cultural impact as opposed to those afforded
less cultural prestige or utility. Teachers may well
assume that the books and subjects that have intensely
interested them might also interest their students, and
that it further marginalizes students to give them
access, for example, only to stories of teen-age problems
and not to more traditional works, or to give them access
to much knowledge about basketball and little about
science.
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Smith is right to point out that literate practices
are not for the most part acquired, through lecture,
exhortation, exercises, or drill, but through
participation in repeated demonstrations of reading and
writing in use. Teachers will want to take advantage of
or create as many occasions as possible for reading and
writing and invite all students to participate.
Most importantly, liberal humanist views of literacy
education do argue for the role literacy can play in
human development. Traditional drama, poetry, and
fiction, and popular culture as well— film, contemporary
music, television, magazines, can speak directly and
powerfully to people’s need to make sense of their
experience, to communicate, to create. Again, groups of
children and adults are further marginalized when it is
assumed that their only uses for literacy will be
functional ones, that they will have no use for reading
for pleasure, for discovery, for confirmation, or writing
to explore and expres ideas.
However, as education asks individuals to develop new
literacy practices, it is ethical to consider the
questions the learner may ask: Why would I want to
change? How can I change? What do I have to do? What
will the outcome be? If some groups of people are being
asked to change a great deal and others not at all, then
93
those who must change might rightly be suspicious and ask
who benefits most from this change. As one black
educator put it, cultural literacy in the "return to
excellence" mode, despite the inclusion of Black Boy and
Martin Luther King in the curriculum, essentially asks
minority teenagers to make the world safer and more
comfortable for the academics designing programs. What
would the outcome be if all the teenagers in Watts became
more conversant with Shakespeare, the provisions of the
Constitution, and DNA? Certainly, for individuals,
knowledge and skills may lead to a way out or a way up;,
however, we know that even for individuals knowledge and
skills are neither judged objectively nor are they
independent factors in individual success. This is most
evident in the discrepancies in pay and job status
between blacks and whites, and between males and females
even with the same educational backgrounds and degrees.
The issue becomes more complicated with whole groups of
people. Freire points out that literacy alone will not
provide jobs where there are none ("Adult Literacy
Process" 367). Literacy alone cannot improve health
care, eliminate sub-standard housing, create wealth in a
community. To what extent will reading the same books
bring the young adults in Watts and those in Beverly
Hills closer together as members of a common culture?
94
Literacy education that is critical of itself will be
careful of the claims it makes. Teachers inevitably will
teach from their own experience, their own cultural
literacy, but acting critically through dialogue with
colleagues and, especially, with learners will struggle
to avoid seeing their own practice as natural and normal,
as the embodiment of literacy itself. We ought to, I
think, avoid the "member of the club” metaphor to the
extent that it suggests that some children and adults
exist outside of culture and, therefore, have little to
bring to an ongoing critical dialogue. Instead of
attempting to smooth over the questions that functional
and cultural views of literacy raise, we ought to focus
on them directly as central to education.
From Theory into Practice
In the Model Literacy Project analyzed in Part II, we
drew from both functional and cultural perspectives on
literacy education. We were concerned, of course, with
students' immediate survival and worked with them,
usually at their request, on job applications, insurance
papers, income tax forms, catalogues of community college
programs, preparation for taking a driver's license test.
We believed both in knowing about the world and in
knowing how to do things with language. We read, wrote,
95
and discussed poems, plays, stories, and articles. We
saw films, listened to and questioned guest speakers. We
developed our own pedagogy or drew on the best current
practice based on what we knew about writing and reading
as processes, as interactions between writers, readers,
texts, and the world. We used group learning activities
to help individuals working together accomplish what they
might not be able to do alone. We tried to speak as
openly and as honestly as we could about who we thought
we were and what were thought we were doing. We tried to
listen carefully. We, further, had in mind a vision of
education for critical literacy, inspired especially by
Paulo Freire, having as both its method and its goal the
enabling of learners and of teachers, too, to think and
act critically to improve their lives.
Some of the things we did worked in that the young
adults in the MLP took them up and pursued them for their
own purposes or that of the group, at least in the
classroom. Some things we suspected worked for the wrong
reasons as when students asked us for workbooks and
patiently filled in exercises hoping to go back and
straighten out once and for all something that went wrong
in first, or fifth, or seventh grade. Some things did
not work for the right reasons, students refusing, for
example, to write an irrelevant sensory description of an
96
apple. Some literacy practices continued to be applied
beyond the classroom as men and women shaped new
knowledge and skills to their own needs and that of their
families and friends. This change for the better, even
in small ways, in people's lives was a goal, but one that
we frequently failed to reach. Freire writes of critical
literacy as reading not just the word but reading the
world. This is, indeed, difficult reading.
Each word, each literate act, even the most
simple— making a list, filling out a form, reading a
novel, writing a poem, discussing a newspaper story— is
embedded in a complicated web of associations— personal,
social, historical. Because the tasks often seemed so
simple, we were constantly misled. Because we rarely saw
these young people read and write outside of the
classroom, we assumed we were bringing them something
new, that literacy could be added on, could fill up an
empty space. But there is no empty space. To change one
element is to affect others. Changing an established
practice for the sake of literacy education, for example,
having workers rather than the crew supervisor write out
the list of tools to be used for the day, is to begin
changing the structure of the workplace. Filling out a
job-application form is not just a new skill for Eduardo
but represents an attempt by him to change his place in
97
the world. Reading a novel if you are a young adult in a
residential job training center is not strictly a matter
of personal choice, but has to do with what books are
available, where they are kept, who else reads them, and
for what purposes. In education, as in other human
endeavors, we cannot wait to act until our picture of the
world is complete, until we are certain of all the
answers. So we begin, but in the Model Literacy Project
we had to constantly rethink, renegotiate the place of
literacy in our students lives and in our own lives and
how that place is shaped and reshaped by the larger
society. Part II will present a case study of literacy
education in practice, focusing particularly on those
conceptual and structural constraints that make the
reshaping of literacy practices in a purposeful way to
benefit individual lives a most difficult task both for
learners and teachers.
98
PART TWO:
LITERACY EDUCATION IN PRACTICE
99
CHAPTER THREE: OVERVIEW OF AN ADULT
LITERACY PROJECT
One of the adults I worked with in a literacy
workshop when asked if the workshop had any effect on his
reading, writing, and communication skills, wrote, "I
try to think more about it. It is not allways first on
my mind." "It is not allways first on my mind" seems a
perfect understated summary of how most adults view the
role of literacy in their lives. Literacy especially
when functioning well is transparent. Most adults take
for granted acts such as reading a label, writing a note,
scanning a newspaper, checking off names on a list. Even
when adults encounter problems in reading, writing, or
reasoning, they do not necessarily think of them as
literacy problems. An adult struggling with the IRS is
more likely to view this as a problem with bureaucratic
red tape than as primarily a problem in written
communication.
In my experience in working with potential high
school drop outs and with young adults and civil service
staff in the project described here, literacy is, as
expected, "not allways first" on their minds and rarely
talked about. When they do talk about reading and
writing, they frequently tell two stories that seem to
conflict. On the one hand, they are often quick to say
100
that they are not very good readers and can't really
write at all or that they don't like to read and write
and find both boring. On the other hand, except for
those who cannot decode at even a minimal level, most
maintain that they certainly "know how" to read. They
seem to say that although they do not claim to read and
write well, they, in a sense, read and write well enough.
This view is quite reasonable. From the perspective
of the larger society the literacy/illiteracy of most
young adults tends not to be of particular concern as
long as they can find stable employment and are not in
other ways a "burden to society." Again, literacy tends
to be transparent except under the stress of transition.
Literacy may only become a matter of concern when workers
are laid off and a factory closes, when the young adult
leaving school cannot find a full-time job paying more
than minimum wage, when the demands of the job change,
when the adult decides to enroll in a vocational program
or complete her GED, when a parent wants to play a role
in his child's education.
At these points of transition, it becomes clear that
while the acquisition of literacy may or may not be
desirable from the perspective of the economy, from the
perspective of the individual, literacy already acquired
represents increased possibility and choices. It is______
101
arguable whether literacy is a cause or an effect of
economic success and unclear how limited schooling is
related to unemployment. Illiteracy is not a disease;
literacy is not a cure for social ills. On the other
hand, the highly educated certainly have few doubts about
the benefits of literacy to themselves.
The question for young adults who drop out of school,
who graduate with minimal skills, who are unemployed or
hold marginal jobs, who may literally struggle to survive
day to day, is, literacy for what and at what cost? What
are their possibilities for using the skills they already
have, maintaining them, and learning to use them in new
ways? What are the benefits and costs of literacy to
these young adults, both in terms of their immediate
situation and their plans and dreams? What are the costs
and benefits in terms of personal and group identity?
Chapters Four and Five of this study examine some of
the ways that classroom and workplace settings both
support and constrain literacy activities. Contrasting
the experiences of young adults in these two contexts
makes clearer the "rules" and "resources" that structure
literacy in each setting. My analysis is based on my
work as a teacher and researcher in the Model Literacy
Project (MLP) developed at the University of Southern
California in cooperation with the California__________ _
102
Conservation Corps (CCC). This chapter will provide
background information on the project and a general
description of daily life in the CCC. This general scene
setting is, of course, essential to an analysis of
literacy in context.
Background: The California Conservation Corps
"Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions"— With
this motto, the California Conservation Corps advertises
itself to young adults as a challenge, an opportunity to
test their skills and develop new ones. The CCC,
patterned after the Conservation Corps of the Depression
years, has been funded by the California state
legislature since 1976. A young woman in the program
describes it as follows:
Well, if you're really interested in joining the
C.C.C., I think it would be a great opportunity for
those of you that haven't any job experience. This
would be a great place to start even though there's
low pay, miserable conditions and hard work. If you
think it's something you can easily adapt to doing
the C.C.C. is for you. You'll be working 50 hours a
week, making minimum wage and getting paid only for
eight hours C.C.C. is a job, but it's also a
training program that offers you experience which
can move you up to bigger and better things, only if
you're willing and able. This is a program of equal
opportunity so ladies, if you say you can't you'd
better learn if you plan on being with the CCC it's
nothing really terrible about that. No one expects
you to dislocate any of your ligaments trying to do
something that you can't. C.C.C. is also accident
free and all corpsmembers try to prevent each other
103
from getting hurt by lending a helping hand when
needed.
C.C.C. also do a lot of traveling even just to
everyday projects you may be working in places like
Malibu, Monterey Park, Santa Monica, Alhambra, etc.
and if you’ve never really been to these places and
would like to go join the C’s.
Young adults in the CCC are called "Gorpsmembers.”
They are hired for one year at minimum wage to work on
projects to maintain or improve the environment and to
assist in natural emergencies. Corpsmembers clear brush,
build trails, clean up vacant lots, build and repair park
facilities, pick up trash along freeways, plant trees;
they sandbag during floods and act as support crews to
fire-fighting teams. At the end of one year, some
Corpsmembers may stay on for an additional year in
leadership or specialist positions. On the other hand,
attrition within the program is a problem. Approximately
25 percent of Corpsmembers actually stay in the program
for one year; the mean stay is six to nine months.
The CCC maintains eighteen residential centers around
the state. In addition, it is moving increasingly to
non-residential "satellite centers" especially in urban
areas. Approximately 50 to 90 Corpsmembers are assigned
to each center. A site combining a residential and
satellite centers may number up to 120 Corpsmembers.
The supervisory staff of the CCC are civil service
employees. These permanent employees are officially______
104
called "Conservationists." The organization of the CCC
is hierarchical and semi-militaristic. Everyone wears a
uniform with a name tag, patch, and hat indicating a home
center and rank. "Headquarters" is in Sacramento.
Regional areas are supervised by a Conservation
Administrator II. At each center a Conservation
Administrator I is in charge, generally assisted by a
Project Coordinator, who especially handles the planning
of work projects. The direct supervision of Corpsmembers
is the responsibility of Conservationist Ifs. As they
say in the CCC, this is "where the rubber meets the
road." Conservationist I's or C-I1s supervise work crews
of 10 to 15 Corpsmembers on a day-to-day basis. Within
each crew, they are assisted by special Corpsmembers who
have risen to the rank of Crew Leaders and who handle
many routine supervisory duties. In addition to other
duties, one staff person at each center generally
supervises "Curriculum" or "Evening Programs." This
person has responsibility for providing instruction in
career development, conservation awareness, and whatever
other educational or recreation activities the center
cares to develop. The "Evening Person" is often
responsible for seeing that Corpsmembers attend required
classes off center and for maintaining discipline around
the center during the evening hours._________________________
105
A Day in The C1s
Mary Jean, known as M. J. , is a C-I, crew supervisor
who worked her way up through the ranks starting as a
Corpsmember when she was 18. Although M.J.'s
grandparents and her mother are all teachers, she dropped
out of school at 16. She says she was bored; school was
like being on an assembly line. As a Corpsmember she
started asking questions, started listening when
supervisors talked to sponsors, started learning on the
job. M.J. and Gerald, another C-1, describe their
typical day.
By the time they arrive at the CCC Center in San
Pedro, California at 6:4-5 in the morning, the
Corpsmembers have already been up for an hour and a half.
Discipline in the Corps is heavy, meant to inculcate the
work ethic. Corpsmembers are expected to line up at 5*30
for half an hour of "physical training," calisthenics and
running. They have from 6:00 until 7:00 to eat
breakfast, shower, clean up the area around their bunks.
At seven, Corpsmembers line up again for roll call. The
next half hour or so is spent in routine duties with
groups of Corpsmembers assigned on a rotating basis to
clean bathrooms, offices, dorms, etc. Other Corpsmembers
have special duties such as checking out the tools that
106
will needed for the day or making a maintenance and
safety check of the vans that carry Corpsmembers to their
job sites. Corpsmember Crew Leaders supervise most of
this work. The C-I supervisory staff use this time to
meet informally with the Project Coordinator to discuss
the work for the day.
Crews are generally on the road by eight and at
their work site by 8:30. The job for Gerald's crew this
day is routine "weed abatement" along the city streets in
Carson, south-central Los Angeles. The CCC works at the
request of the city. The Project Coordinator from San.
Pedro Center has already met with city maintenance to
work out what will be done, when, and where. Gerald gets
a written description of the project, a list of streets,
the name of a contact person. Gerald gives a copy of
this to his Crew Leader. At the work site, Gerald, the
Crew Leader, and the city's contact person walk over the
work area, discussing again what will be done during the
day. The crew leader gets groups of Corpsmembers started
picking up trash, cutting down weeds. They will work at
this throughout the day with two fifteen-minute breaks
and half an hour for lunch.
M.J.'s crew has been working for several weeks
painting an old YMCA building in San Pedro. M.J., still
asking questions, knows that this is a historic___________
107
structure, built in 1918, designed by Julia Morgan, -who
also designed Hearst Castle and was the first woman
licensed as a architect in California. She discusses
with her crew why it1s important to preserve historic
buildings and brings in a local newspaper article about
the restoration that mentions the work of the CCC.
Corpsmembers are back at the Center around 4-: 00.
They take care of the tools they have used, sweep out the
vans. The work day officially ends at 4:30. M.J. and
Gerald fill out and turn in any routine paperwork due
that day and usually meet again with the Project
Coordinator and the other crew supervisors to report what
work has been done and confirm plans for the next day.
Because of the managerial style of the Area Manager and
Center Administrator at San Pedro, the crew supervisors
receive copies of all the bulletins and memos from
Headquarters and are asked for their ideas. This means
more "paper,1 1 but they like being informed and consulted.
Gerald heads for home; M.J. will be stopping to pick up
her three-ryear-old daughter.
Meanwhile, on Mondays, the Corpsmembers meet with
the Area Manager in a "community meeting" to discuss
problems, gripes, what's going on in the center. Other
evenings Corpsmembers head for the phones, the showers,
the basketball court, and dinner between 5:00 and 6:30.
108
In the past year, the CCC has been arranging for
Corpsmembers throughout the state to enroll in local
community colleges. After dinner at San Pedro,
Corpsmembers are loaded on the vans again for classes at
Harbor College.. Because the program is new, this semester
many Corpsmembers were simply assigned to a psychology
class, not a subject they had indicated particular
interest in and in a classroom setting where many of them
feel uncomfortable. Corpsmembers have quit over the
issue of being required to attend classes.
At the Center, Corpsmembers hang out, watch TV, play
pool. There is a philosophy of keeping people busy so
they don't get in trouble. The rules are strict: no
drinking, no drugs, no fighting, no overt sexual activity
with other Corpsmembers. When Corpsmembers are fired, it
is usually for incidents that happen after the regular
working day.
Background: The CCC-USC Model Literacy Project
In the spring of 1983, Olga Connolly, a former
Olympic athlete and an experienced organizer of programs
for inner city youth, approached the University of
Southern California to ask for assistance in teaching
writing to the young adults at the Los Angeles Urban
Center of the California Conservation Corps, a center_____
109
located only three blocks from the USC campus. Under the
direction of Michael Holzman, then Director of Freshman
Writing at USC, a group of faculty members, graduate
students, and postdoctoral research fellows became
interested in the project and were able to establish its
benefit to the university both as a community service
project and as an opportunity for research in the area of
adult literacy and learning.
A pilot program, the USC-CCC Model Literacy Project,
was developed cooperatively with the Corpsmember
Development Office at CCC Headquarters in Sacramento.
Approximately 50 Corpsmembers from the Los Angeles Urban
Center would come to USC for one hour of their regular
working day, three mornings a week, to work in small
tutorial groups on developing their reading and writing.
The first stage of the pilot program ran for eight weeks
during Summer 1983 and then continued during the 1983-'84-
school year.
During summer 1984, as an extension of the original
project, a group of nine teacher-researchers lived for a
month at the Del Norte Center in northern California
developing literacy workshops on site. The programs at
USC and Del Norte were relatively expensive with a
teacher-student ratio of about one to five. In order to
try to make the workshops self-supporting, we also________
110
experimented in Summer ’84- with the idea of a "literacy
spike." "Spikes" in the CCC are special projects that
take Corpsmembers. away from their home center. The idea
of the literacy spike is that Corpsmembers will complete
a work project for a university in exchange for three to
four weeks of reading/writing workshops. During summer
'84-t Corpsmembers from San Pedro and Camarillo Centers
spent almost a month working at USC and attending
workshop classes for two hours a day. This program was
replicated at the University of California, Santa Barbara
in summer '85 and at San Diego State University and
California State University, Los Angeles in 1986;
additional "spikes" are planned for 1986-'87.
These projects have been rather extensively reported
on from a number of different perspectives (Holzman,
Holzman and Connolly). Several points seem worth
summarizing here. Although state wide Corpsmembers are
predominantly white, almost all the Corpsmembers in Los
Angeles are minority youth— Black, Hispanic, and recent
Asian immigrants living in urban neighborhoods within
commuting distance of the CCC Center. About fifty
percent of Corpsmembers have high school diplomas. Most
have basic reading and writing skills at a level often
described as fifth, sixth, or seventh grade. Only a few
are unable to decode or encode; for example, only three
111
of the Corpsmembers we worked with in LA were
alphabetically illiterate. A few other Corpsmembers were
fluent, experienced readers and writers able to perform
well with what might be described as college level
skills *
Most Corpsmembers, then, read and write well enough
to meet the quite minimal literacy demands of their work
in the Corps and the kinds of work they tend to seek
outside the Corps, unskilled or semi-skilled labor with
Cal-Trans, parks and recreation, or city governments.
These relatively well-paid, civil service jobs, however,
are hard to get with many applicants for the few openings
available.
In their time outside their working hours, some
Corpsmembers do, of course, read for their own interest
and recreation. A few others do write letters, keep
personal diaries, write poetry or song lyrics. Many will
browse through popular magazines if they are made
available. Most, however, do no extended reading and
writing. Those who do not have high school diplomas are
enrolled as part of their commitment to the Corps in
basic education or GED classes either at their center or
in local adult schools. For some, especially those
lacking only a few credits for high school graduation,
112
this does lead to a diploma. For many, it seems to be a
re-run of their earlier, unsuccessful school experiences.
The problem, then, for Corpsmembers is not to go
’ ’back to basics." This, indeed, seems to be where they
already are. The problem is to activate and extend the
skills Corpsmembers already have. In working with the
CCC, we were interested in exploring how this might
happen in the workplace as well as in the classroom. My
analysis of this project is, of course, informed by my
own practice within it. During the summer pilot program
in 1983, I taught a heterogeneous group of six
Corpsmembers and continued as a teacher during the
1983-'84 school year with a group of the least skilled
Corpsmembers including two non-readers. During that
year, in my role as co-director of the USC/California
Writing Project, I also met regularly with other project
teachers to discuss common problems and concerns.
At the end of the year, the Corpsmember Development
Office asked us to share what we had learned with CCC
supervisory staff throughout the state. With my
colleagues Judith Rodby, Frank Gaik, and DeDe Gallow, I
directed five four-day workshops for staff which were
held during spring 1984 at San Pedro Center, San
Bernadino Center, and at the CCC Training Academy in the
Sierra foothills near Angels Camp, California (See________
113
Leeson, Project Analysis). This extensive involvement
with CCC staff and Corpsmembers in their workplace, not
ours, allowed us to check on and, inevitably, forced us
to modify some of the assumptions about literacy
education we had developed in our more sheltered
classroom setting.
About twenty staff members attended each workshop,
ninety-five individuals in all, representing a highly
varied group in terms of educational background, job
experience, age, race and ethnicity, and the range and
functions of their own literacy. Approximately one third
were women; about a quarter minority, Black or Hispanic.
Two of the staff members we worked with have PhD's, one
in English and one in education. We know that two others
cannot read and write even at very minimal levels. The
majority are high school graduates often with some
college work. Several in each group reported dropping out
and then, later, finishing high school in adult
equivalency programs. About ten of the staff members who
participated in the workshops were at that time either
center administrators or project coordinators. Almost
twenty were "curriculum coordinators" or in charge of
"evening programs" at their centers, some because they
had a special interest in education, others because no
one else wanted the position. Seven workshop_________ _
1 U
participants were supervisors at the Academy, a "boot
camp" for new Corpsmembers and a training center for crew
leaders; ten others supervised Corpsmembers chosen for
special energy conservation training at the Placer Energy
Center. The remaining forty or so staff members
attending the workshops were Conservationist I's in
charge of running work crews on a day-to-day basis.
Several participants in each session had themselves been
Corpsmembers and had worked their way up "through the
ranks" to supervisory positions.
From the Corpsmembers and staff emerges at least a
partial portrait of the forces that have operated to
promote or constrain their acquisition of literacy and
that shape their day-to-day interactions in the
workplace. Our experience suggests to us both the
possibilities and the limitations of "workplace
literacy," the kinds of alterations that could make
classrooms and workplaces better environments for
literacy, and, finally, coming full circle, some of the
special advantages that the classroom setting offers for
literacy development.
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CHAPTER FOUR: LITERACY EDUCATION IN THE
KHAKI-COLLAR WORKPLACE
Every effort to promote the functional, cultural, and
critical literacy of individuals through education must
come to terms with the paradoxical functions of schooling
pointed out by Giroux:— on the one hand, speaking to "a
very real need on the part of all socio-economic classes
to learn about and transform the nature of their
existence," and on the other hand, functioning to
maintain "a society characterized by a high degree of
social and economic inequality" (Ideology 14-3) - These
functions which conflict in the classroom are even more
exaggerated in the California Conservation Corps which
sees itself both as a "youth program" committed to the
individual development of young men and women and as a
"job program" disciplining non-mainstream youth to be
good workers.
Reading and writing are activities in the CCC as in
other settings in which persons interact through systems
of ideas, purposes, and forms. Power relationships are
shaped and maintained in this interaction. The artifacts
of literacy, the tools for reading and writing and
finished texts, reflect these relationships. The person
on the work site who carries the clipboard is usually the
person in charge of the job. The finished project
116
proposal is the trace of negotiations already completed.
The person who designs a form constrains the possible
responses of the person required to fill out the form.
Because Corpsmembers are on the lowest rung of the
bureaucratic ladder, they may find little need for
extended reading and writing unless they move into
specialized job roles. When Corpsmembers are viewed
primarily as manual laborers learning basic job skills,
they may not be much involved in the activities that
require much writing in the C’s— planning, organizing
people and projects, record keeping, evaluating,
communicating over distance or time— unless Centers make
a conscious effort to involve them. Corpsmembers may
not, in fact, make connections with the social systems
which ultimately determine the work they do on the
streets of Carson, in a city park, or on a wilderness
trail. This does not affect their performance as manual
laborers; it does, however, limit the possibility of
developing literacy practices associated with having
greater control over one's own life and a wider choice of
j obs.
How to promote this development? How to promote
"active literacy," not simply "knowing how" to read and
write at a minimal level, but being able to use reading
and writing to get things done in the world? The
1:17
practical question in literacy programs comes down to
where and how adults might develop new literacy
practices. To what extent can classroom programs meet
the needs of working adults? On the other hand, how does
the workplace itself, especially in job training
programs, both facilitate and constrain literacy?
Program planners, teachers, and students in the Model
Literacy Project drew at various times on each of the
different conceptions of literacy education discussed in
Part I— from a functional perspective, helping learners
fill out job forms, applications for food stamps,
insurance claims; from a cultural perspective, increasing
world knowledge through reading, discussion, guest
speakers; from a critical perspective, developing
interviewing, questioning, and writing strategies to
consider problems such as unfair treatment on the job,
limited access to social services, or stereotyping in the
media.
Pedagogy in the Model Literacy Project was eclectic,
driven partly by functional, cultural, and critical views
of literacy and partly by pragmatic considerations of
what "worked" to engage Corpsmembers1 interest and
participation. Despite conflicting goals and an eclectic
array of teaching practices, however, several factors
regularly recur as features of pedagogy in the MLP both
118 .
in the first year in the classroom and later as we
attempted to move the program out of the classroom and
into the workplace. These factors developed from the
instructors1 previous experience, primarily as teachers
of composition, and from their perception that although
most Corpsmembers "know how" to read and write they have
few occasions for doing so. Pedagogical practice
throughout the MLP tended to be highly student-centered,
to make writing rather than reading the central focus of
instruction, to teach "writing as a process," and to
measure students' development primarily in terms of
activity and engagement, the degree to which Corpsmembers
would actually take on reading and writing tasks. This
pedagogy draws heavily on a model of literacy acquisition
like Frank Smith's described in Chapter Two, positing
that learners acquire written language much as they
acquire spoken language, as "spontaneous apprentices" in
situations in which print is used in meaningful ways.
Instruction in strategies common to process pedagogy was
often thought of essentially as "deprograming"
ineffective strategies. Students were encouraged to
begin prewriting and drafting without fully developed
plans for writing, to use talk with each other and the
teacher as a source for generating and developing ideas,
to defer editing for surface correctness to the stage of
. 1 1 9
preparing a final draft, to reflect on previous school
experiences and reject those that were negative.
It is tempting to view the writing workshop
classroom as an environment that is primarily
facilitative for literacy and to see day-to-day work in
the CCC as restrictive and limiting. However, it is more
useful to contrast how literacy practices are structured
in each setting. Dell Hymes1 advice, noted in my
introduction, is again appropriate. As he points out,
"Individual accounts that individually pass without
notice, as familiar possibilities, leap out when
juxtaposed, as contrasts that require explanation." This
kind of contrast was especially important in the Model
Literacy Project because we as teachers tended to take
our own practice as a prescription for developing
literacy and attempted to transpose it to the workplace.
Contrasting the CCC as a workplace with the workshop
classroom helps to reveal the "rules" that structure
literacy practices in both settings. Though, in fact,
the "rules" are flexible and overlap from setting to
setting, the following listing suggests general
tendencies in each context:
120
The CCC As a Workplace
1. Writing tasks are organized
hierarchically. One
individual's knowledge and
experience may function for
the group.
2. Writing primarily organizes
and is organized by relationships
and activity.
3. Writing operates in concert
with activity and a mixture of
language modalities.
4-. Literacy practices are seen
to have negative as well as
positive effects.
The Classroom Writing
Workshop
1 . Individual
performance is
emphasized.
2. Writing is
primarily organized
by reflection and
logic.
3. Writing as
an activity and as
a language modality is
focused on directly.
4. Literacy practices
are seen to have
generally positive
effects.
This chapter primarily examines how activities and
relationships in the CCC structure day-to-day literacy
practices. Chapter 5 returns to the classroom, examining
more closely its assumptions and illustrating both the
positive and negative results of attempting to move
literacy practices new to Corpsmembers out of the writing
workshop and into the workplace. Throughout the value of
contrast is stressed. Process pedagogy can suggest how
workplaces may be humanized, and how, especially in
training programs, they can become more facilitative
environments for development. On the other hand, the
classroom can learn from the workplace, modeling some of
121
the ways literacy is facilitated in daily life and
helping young adults become more conscious of the
interactions shaping their work. More importantly,
because schools and literacy "programs'1 function in many
ways as bureaucratic workplaces, an examination of
literacy practices in the "C’s" reveals some of the
underlying structures of the classroom, the ways in which
it too is constraining as well as enabling.
Writing in the "Real" World
Ideally, the classroom writing workshop aims to be
facilitative, to help writers actually produce pieces of
writing, reflect on experiences and ideas, make new
connections with a rich environment through participation
in the workshop. The workshop also aims to be
developmental, helping learners develop writing
strategies that they can apply effectively to new tasks
they encounter outside the classroom.
These ideal goals reflect a vision of the classroom
as an essentially supportive, nurturing environment.
Hard-headed "realists" may object that such mollycoddling
does little to prepare young people for the "real" world,
the workplace envisioned as a scene of cool efficiency
where work is completed as quickly and efficiently as
possible. In fact, of course, the classroom is a setting
122
as real as the workplace. Further, as was repeatedly
illustrated in Part I, the classroom in many ways
replicates the workplace and, in addition to nurturing,
plays a major role in training and sorting young people
for later jobs. On the other hand, the workplace itself
must be to some extent facilitative, must draw on or
create processes to get work done. The workplace is also
developmental, a scene in which individuals often
continue to develop new abilities and skills.
In many ways, the workplace, especially an employment
program with an emphasis on training and development,
offers an especially ''rich” environment for the continued
literacy development of young adults. Gorpsmembers, men
and women, of various ethnic, racial, geographic, and
social backgrounds are organized in crews that must work
together. Their daily activities are "meaningful" in
accomplishing useful work in the world. Ideally,
through both formal and informal instruction Corpsmembers
are expected to develop conservation and environmental
awareness, job skills, and job safety. They are
confronted with at least a few "real" literacy tasks on
the job. When Joe wants to take an overnight trip from
his center to Eureka, California he painstakingly prints
on a "Request for Time Off" form his name, crew number,
dates, how the leave will be covered, his destination_____
123
"Eurka," and the reason for leave: "Shopping for back
contry mutrel." When Ken gets in a "scuffle" with
another Corpsmember, he is obliged to fill out an
"Incident Report" form explaining:
About 5:00 p.m. or so, I layed down because of a
stomach ach and tierd, then about 6:00 p.m. John
went into his room and turned on his radio, loud. I
went in and asked him to turn it down, he said, no.
Its not quit time. After I went into his room and
asked him to turn it down I went into my room and he
came in and started telling me about dorm respect.
Then we argued some more and it broke into a little
scuffle. Monday John and I talked about it and
resolved it all between us.
Crew supervisors are regularly responsible for, among
other things, evaluations, a weekly work accomplishment
summary, rosters, vehicle check forms, tool requests, and
"write-ups" to document "uncooperative" behavior that may
lead to "terminating" a Corpsmember, and, at least
occasionally, for memos, accident reports,
correspondence. Most crew supervisors delegate at least
some of these tasks to Corpsmember crew leaders.
As teachers and program planners working with CCC
staff supervisors, we saw in this environment and these
tasks the potential for helping young adults who had
dropped out or been pushed out of traditional schools to
develop in a "real" setting connections between
themselves and an expanded world view and to develop more
effective writing and reading processes that could be
124
applied flexibly to other literacy tasks * Our goal in
staff training for supervisors and center administrators
was to demonstrate some fairly ' ’simple" ways in which
staff members themselves without being full-time teachers
could facilitate for Corpsmembers this connection-making
and "deprogram" negative attitudes and ineffective
writing and reading strategies. The ninety-five staff
members who attended four-day workshops participated in
"process" activities— brainstorming, freewriting, keeping
journals, meeting in work groups to formulate literacy
plans, and publishing a newsletter with literacy
autobiographies, center reports, advice and suggestions
for Corpsmember development. Staff members indicated on
two evaluation measures, a follow-up questionnaire, and
in interviews that process approaches were most useful in
facilitating their own writing and were, at least in an
ideal sense, relevant to their work with Corpsmembers.
Writing process activities, however, even when
closely modeled on the daily reading and writing of some
workers in the CCC seemed artificial and unnatural when
introduced to all Corpsmembers in the workplace. This
does not, I think, mean that the classroom should look to
the workplace as the standard for what counts as
"natural" or "real" writing, especially if workplace
writing is equated with a reductive functional literacy
125
emphasizing letter writing and filling in job forms. It
does suggest, however, that an examination of writing in
a bureaucratic workplace like the CCC can be a useful
corrective to the presumption that the process classroom
models more closely than other contexts the way that
"real'” writers work.
Writing As a Purposeful Activity
The most obvious difference that clearly emerges in
writing as an activity in the writing workshop and in the
"C's" is in participants’ purposes for engaging in
writing. While it is common in the classroom for all
learners to write at the same time and often to address
the same writing task, in the CCC as in other
bureaucratic workplaces, writing tasks generally are
arranged differentially and hierarchically. One person
or group performs a writing task that directs or responds
to the work of many others. A frequent ideal purpose for
writing in the classroom is to lead students through
introspection and group interaction to reflect on their
own experience and learning, making new connections
between events and ideas both for themselves and their
readers. In the CCC as a workplace most often writing
ideally organizes activity and establishes and maintains
relationships between individuals. As indicated in_______
126,
Chapter One, outside the classroom print is often not
itself a central focus but auxiliary to other tasks and
embedded in a matrix involving other language modalities,
physical activity, and social interaction.
The "average" day at an urban CCC center as
described in Chapter Three illustrates this interplay.
When Gerald, a crew supervisory arrives at 6:4-5 a.m., the
administrative offices are as always awash with
paperwork. The offices are spartan, partitioned spaces
in a converted army barracks. A good many of the papers
on bulletin boards, stacked in "in” and "Out" baskets or
spread on desktops, are creased, wrinkled, and smudged,
filled out in the back of a van at a roadside worksite or
passed around in a tool shop. Gerald as a crew
supervisor carries a clipboard. He goes over with
"Camel," the project coordinator, the work to be done for
the day. Camel consults a form listing the streets where
weeds are to be cut and a brief description of the
project, and Gerald gets a copy.
"Weed abatement" seems to offer little potential for
literacy development and yet viewed from a global
perspective much writing surrounds this day of routine
activity. As a government agency, the CCC owes its
existence to proposals, legislation, and budgets on the
state level. During conservative administrations,_________
127
programs for youth need to fight for existence. Policy
statements, public relations materials, cooperative
agreements with other state and federal agencies and the
private sector are produced at Sacramento headquarters.
Comprehensive personnel records are compiled. At the
local level, correspondence and, finally, a contract
establishes the work that will be done this day in the
city of Carson. The project description as a piece of
paper is a link between the conception of useful work
done by young people and the actual physical activity of
the day. At the work site, Gerald goes over it again with
Andrew, the crew leader who works with him, deciding how
to deploy Corpsmembers and tools to get the job done. At
the end of the job, which takes three days, Gerald,
consulting with Andrew, fills out a "Work Accomplishment
Summary" form indicating what work was completed and any
problems, in this case a rainy afternoon, that slowed the
crew's progress.
Gerald and Andrew handle for the whole crew most of
the reading and writing needed for this job. A few other
Corpsmembers complete designated tasks like checking out
tools or filling out a thirty-item vehicle safety
checksheet. All of this reading and writing is in a
sense pre-organized by forms which are used over and over
again. As interpreters of the forms, Gerald and Andrew
128,
control the work of others below them in the
organizational hierarchy. On the other hand, the forms
are the concrete documentation of their own
accountability to those above them in the organization.
''Put It In Writing"
Gerald and other crew supervisors are able to
articulate quite explicitly many of the uses of writing
in the CCC, in a sense, the benefits of literacy.
Important purposes they list include planning,
remembering information, organizing people and projects,
keeping track of progress on a job, and communicating to
others in the organization. They are also able to
articulate quite clearly that literacy is not always
facilitative, that it, in fact, frustrates goals they
would set for themselves, and, perhaps, even what they
perceive to be the goals of the organization.
Writing is time-consuming. Productivity is measured
most directly in the CCC by the number of trees planted,
the square feet of brush cleared, the number of sandbags
stacked on a levee, the linear feet of forest trail
built. In these figures the Corps feels it demonstrates
its service and "cost effectiveness" to the state of
California. The outcomes of other goals involving
individual development, conservation awareness, and the
129
acquisition of job skills are harder to quantify and more
difficult to document. Evaluation forms of every sort
are used to check off, write up, write down the daily
activities of Corpsmembers and staff. While written forms
are facilitative in planning and organizing work and in
documenting and communicating results of work, they are
not ends in themselves but are auxiliary to the "real"
work. This writing which is not counted in direct
measures of productivity takes up a considerable amount
of staff time. In addition, writing creates storage
problems. Staff members fear no one actual reads or uses
much of the paperwork they are required to complete.
They know that some of it finds its way into policy and
reports at the state level; other papers seem merely to
pile up.
Staff members notice that at the center level writing
rarely completely fulfills the purpose very often
ascribed to it, that of communication. Joe’s request for
leave, Keith's incident report, Gerald's work summary
will all be responded to orally and reinterpreted if
necessary. In one sense, then, the writing seems
redundant; in another sense, however, it not only records
but it serves to focus the occasion for discussing a
leave, an incident, a project. Again, writing functions
in concert with activity and oral language. Joe's______
130
filling out a form is an act marking the fact that in the
"C's" one must have formal permission to leave the
center. Writing an incident report gives Keith a chance
to "cool off" and, as a focal point, helps structure his
later discussion with his crew supervisor about the
"scuffle."
Because writing so often traces activity or oral
language interaction, surface correctness is certainly
not essential; meaning can easily be negotiated
face-to-face. Surface correctness, spelling,
punctuation, and usage are, however, issues of status and
decorum in the "C’s" as elsewhere. As in the general
population, there is a wide range of skill and
concern— from administrators who pride themselves on
their spelling, to those who are aware of and
self-conscious about errors, to those who look for their
status and self-esteem in forums other than that of
standard written English. The persona the writer wishes
to project and the audience are often determining.
Camel, who learned English as a second language and has
worked his way up through the ranks from junior high
drop-out to project coordinator, keeps a frayed paperback
dictionary on his desk and refers to it often as part of
his role as an administrator. Better-educated
Corpsmembers tend to be assigned to clerical jobs.
131
Roselee, who graduated as a top student from a parochial
girls1 school in Los Angeles and who joined the Corps as
a "challenge," works as a clerk in the LA Urban Center
helping both staff and Corpsmembers with writing and
editing. Writers are, of coupse, most concerned with
material, going out of the center— job applications,
reports, correspondence. From time to time/ however,
administrators may put pressure on Corpsmembers to "clean
up" items they are turning in at the center on the
theory, often invoked in classrooms, that it is good
practice for when they move on to the "real" world.
Writing can serve to focus communication; it can also
often serve as a barrier to communication. Being told to
"put it in writing" is one way of discouraging action.
Corpsmembers, for example, may file grievances to protest
unfair treatment. Filling out the written form tests the
seriousness of the Corpsmember and. to some extent
protects the staff against frivolous complaints. On the
other hand, those staff members who believe in drill
sergeant discipline may cut off every attempt at
disagreement with, "If you don’t like it, file a
grievance," a step meaning that it may be more difficult
to settle the dispute at a face-to-face interpersonal
level, that formal systems of negotiation and authority
must be called into play, that a written document will
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preserve what might have started as a minor dispute.
Jerome Harste in Language Stories and Literacy Lessons
points out that writing is risky because it leaves
tracks.
Administrators may also cut off communication by
asking that proposals for projects, center activities, or
changes in procedures be put in writing in order to be
considered. The proposer must weigh the time it will
take to develop a written proposal against the likelihood
that the request will be implemented. Where such written
communication is seriously considered, for example at a
center where Corpsmembers' evaluations of projects are
used to help determine future projects, even Corpsmembers
with minimal writing skills are more likely to make the
effort to fill out a form. Otherwise, Corpsmembers,
especially underclass, minority young adults used to
frustrating encounters with the "system," are inclined to
view such requests as just more bureaucratic bullshit.
Active Literacy in the Workplace
Because literacy tasks in the "C's" are arranged
hierarchically with one person performing a task for the
whole group, many Corpsmembers can function quite well
day to day barely reading and writing at all. Even those
who are alphabetically illiterate, able to decode only at
133
a minimal level, can perform well on the job. One of the
crew supervisors we know cannot read and write. Darryl
is excellent at working with young adults, experienced as
a forest fire fighter, responsible and intelligent. He
finds Corpsmembers on each crew who handle his day-to-day
paperwork for him. Because he is an excellent worker,
his supervisors "cover" for him, helping him avoid
situations where his inability to read and write might be
revealed.
Louis, a Corpsmember, is also alphabetically
illiterate. Again, because he is hard working and
reliable, he is valued by the organization. However, for
both Darryl and Louis not reading severely limits their
job choices. Further promotion for Darryl in the CCC
would involve written civil service exams and
administrative duties requiring more extensive written
reports and correspondence. Louis, although he managed
to memorize enough information to pass a driver's exam,
cannot advance even to van driver because of his
inability to read street signs or a map.
Darryl and Louis are again, however, part of a small
minority in the "C's." Most Corpsmembers are able to
decode and encode. They read and write at about a fifth
or sixth grade level, a level generally sufficient to
begin acquiring new literacy practices associated with |
134-
job specialization or job advancement in the CCC.
Literacy itself, except in the case of office clerks, is
rarely a criteria for advancement. The focus is on the
work task. However, as a result of job specialization,
some Corpsmembers do find new uses for the skills they
have. New job skills in the CCC are generally acquired
through apprenticeship and through a blend of informal
and formal learning. For example, a Corpsmember
interested in becoming an acting crew leader may as a
first step be assigned a special duty like performing a
safety check each day of the van that will take the crew
to their worksite. This task involves filling out a
check sheet of thirty items. The new Corpsmember will
begin by assisting the Corpsmember currently assigned to
the job. Checking off the items on the form is
important, but obviously more important is knowing how
one actually checks the "radiator coolant reservoir" or
the "power steering fluid." Much, of course, depends on
the supervisor1s perception of those nebulous qualities
discussed in Chapter One, the employee’s "basic skills of
communications, personal relations, motivation, and
self-confidence" (Dept, of Education). If the crew
supervisor feels that these qualities are demonstrated in
the performance of special duties at the crew level, the
CM may then be sent to the "C’s" training Academy in_____
135
central California for direct classroom instruction in
leadership including the paperwork associated with
supervision.
Acquiring new manual skills may also involve some
"book learning," but, again, usually starts with
apprenticeship. Becoming a chainsaw operator, for
example, has a certain glamour in the Corps. The
chainsaw is a relatively dangerous tool; using it seems
more exciting than hacking away at brush with hand tools.
The aspiring chainsaw operator begins as an apprentice, a
"swamper," not actually handling the chainsaw in action,
but observing and assisting another Corpsmember who is
already qualified. This on-the-job training comes first
and during this time the Corpsmember must demonstrate
excellent safety habits. Then, in order to become
qualified, the Corpsmember must take a formal class and
study a written manual on chainsaw safety and
maintenance. Supervisors agree that the written
instruction can only make sense to Corpsmembers who
already have work-site experience.
Finally, Corpsmembers* literacy skills may be
activated in specialized technical training, for example,
in horticulture, landscape gardening, energy
conservation. Here again, much is learned by "doing" and
by spoken explanations and instruction. However, in
136
these training areas staff instructors may be frustrated
by Corpsmembers' difficulties with reading technical
material. Neither staff nor Corpsmembers themselves may
be willing to invest the time and effort it would take to
make written information on solar energy accessible to
the least skilled readers. Though no minimum level of
skills is set for these programs, staff tend to select
and Corpsmembers are self-selected who are more adept at
formal, classroom learning.
Though all of these "special opportunities" help
Corpsmembers develop more active literacy that they may
apply beyond the time they spend in the Corps, these
opportunities do not affect the majority of rank and file
Corpsmembers. To present a balanced picture, this does
not mean that they are simply "illiterate dopes." As
indicated in Chapter Three, outside of their work duties
Corpsmembers may also be enrolled in high school
equivalency or community college classes. They may read
newspapers, magazines, and paperback books. They may
write letters, and poems, and song lyrics.
They may, on the other hand, spend a year in the
"C's" rarely handling a pencil and paper or a text longer
than an advertising slogan. One view in the Corps held
by both staff and Corpsmembers is that this is certainly
acceptable. This view holds that if people work hard all
13?
day, are good workers, then what they do about literacy
and education is their own business. However, another
view emphasizes that the CCC is supposed to be a
development as well as a work program, preparing young
adults for future jobs. Staff members taking this
perspective feel that at least some literacy activity
should be, if necessary, required as part of each
Corpsmember's day-to-day routine. The central
administration of the CCC supports this view; for a
variety of reasons, some of them conflicting, they
settled on the idea that each Corpsmember should keep a
daily journal. This act of writing daily in a journal,
even when honored more in the breach than in the
observance, in many ways symbolically represents for
staff and Corpsmembers an attempt at literacy education
in the CCC. While day-to-day literacy tasks are
generally taken for granted as simply necessary to get
the job done, it is hoped that this basically extraneous
practice can promote active literacy.
Everyone Writes Every Day
What is interesting about the journal writing program
in the CCC is that it brings together process classroom
assumptions about writing with the day-to-day functioning
of the workplace. Most interesting are the ways in which
138
journal writing, when it is actually practiced, has been
assimilated or ''naturalized'1 within the basic structure
of the "C's."
The journal writing program was introduced in the
California Conservation Corps in 1980, considerably
before the start of the Model Literacy Project, by CCC
staff members who attended summer workshops on writing
sponsored by the Bay Area Writing Project, the home base
for the National Writing Project. The guidelines for the
daily journal program, revised in 1984> require that each
Corpsmember write 500 words a week in a notebook issued
by his or her home center. According to the guidelines,
"Journals encourage fluency— correctness is not the
objective... Corpsmembers should be allowed to write on
any topic." The journals are reviewed weekly by crew
supervisors who are advised to make positive responses
and refrain from correcting errors unless Corpsmembers
request such help.
The guidelines for journal writing reflect
pedagogical practice in process writing workshops.
Students in writing classes are often encouraged or
required to keep a journal, writer's notebook, or log.
This is generally thought of as expressive writing, what
James Britton describes as "language close to the self,
revealing the speaker, verbalizing his consciousness,_____
139
displaying his close relationship with the reader” (227).
Expressive writing that is informal in structure and
voice is rightly valued as a means of self-expression,
and as way of examining experience, discovering new
ideas, and making sense of the world. For both
inexperienced and more practiced writers, being freed
from the constraints of carefully shaping discourse for a
critical reader can lead to increased fluency, to the
ability to generate longer stretches of text and, as a
result, increased opportunities to discover new ideas in
writing.
Keith, for example, in a writing workshop produces a
three page narrative that reads in part:
How To Lose A Woman
Im writing about this subject because I have already
experienced it. Right now I want to keep it
personal, I lost a woman who I had been with for 3
1/2 or maybe 4 yrs. Well to make it simpler we
started going together August 29, 1979 Everything
was just great I had me a job working at a park and
had me a car and we used to go out the normal things
a couple would do then about a 1/2 year after we
were going together I started to have a problem and
I didn't realize it but I had a drinking problem,
and for a whole yr she would talk to me about it and
I would not pay attention, because I was the proud
person I thought I was and did not want to be told
anything it got worse.
Keith continues with a story of redemption. After
hitting bottom, he seeks help from his church and an
alcohol rehabilitation program and is ultimately reunited
UO
with his girlfriend and baby daughter and reinstated in
his job in the C1s. This is a familiar genre not just to
me but to Keith too in the church and the AA program.
However, for Keith it is not just a story; it is his own
story. He asks me to read it privately, and we talk
about his experience privately. let when others read
their rough drafts to the group, Keith asks to read his.
He looks down at his paper, stumbles occasionally. The
group is respectful and afterwards warm. They says they
did not know this about Keith, congratulate him both on
his recovery and his writing, urge him to stay with it,
not to give up. While one might cynically assess Keith’s
narrative as cliched and naive or feel that Keith ought
to be pushed to critically explore the implications for
male/female relationships in his story, this piece of
writing represents a "success" for Keith and is taken as
such by the teacher and the group.
From the perspective of the CCC■as' an organization,
the journal writing program is appealing because it is
simple and inexpensive. Although the correctness or
quality of journal entries is not evaluated, policy
makers in Sacramento believe that through journal writing
young men and women can at least continue to find some
use for whatever writing skills they may have when they
enter the Corps and for whatever skills they may be
U 1
acquiring in more formal classes. Supposedly, no
training is needed and the only expense involved is the
cost of the notebooks. All Corpsmembers need to do is
write; all staff members need to do is make sure that
they write.
From the perspective of Corpsmembers and their crew
supervisors, journal writing can easily be seen as just
another requirement of employment like wearing a uniform,
being at work on time, or learning to use a pulaski.
Again, hard headed "realists" of every persuasion may
believe that, of course, this would be the reaction of
working adults. From a functional perspective,
expressive writing may seem a waste of time for adults
who need saleable skills. Cultural literacy may suggest
that adults can hardly learn much simply by talking to
themselves. From a critical perspective, expressive
writing seems to offer little hope of improved working or
living conditions. Paradoxically, all of these
perspectives offer some truth, and, yet, at the same
time, many staff and Corpsmembers for the past six years
have found ways to make journal writing "fit" with
day-to-day functioning in the "Crs".
As a category, expressive writing says more about the
situation for writing than about the content or the form
that a piece of writing will take. The writing need not
u 2
accomplish any particular "work" in the world nor does it
need to move toward a finished product. The emphasis in
expressive writing as originally described by Britton is
on the writer's own intentions, psychological state, and
writing process. Britton, especially through the
examples he presents, seems to suggest that children can
write quite naturally in this way if they have not been
spoiled by schoolroom inhibitions. The child's intention
is to express quite freely, as he might in conversation,
his experience, impressions, thinking. He assumes the
reader will value his expression. He produces this
writing easily without worrying about structure or
surface conventions.
Expressive writing, while presented as a powerful
tool for "meaning making," may then also be thought of as
a fairly "low-level" literacy activity that can be
practiced by inexperienced as well as skilled writers.
In this sense, anyone can do it. However, not everyone
finds such writing easy, as any teacher who has directed
a class to "write whatever you like" knows. Such a
directive raises anxieties about what the teacher
"really" wants, how the writing will be evaluated,
whether it will be correct, whether the writer has
anything interesting to say. Getting rid of those
anxieties is assumed to be a key to fluent adult writing,
143
and books like Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers are
devoted to short-circuiting these schooled inhibitions.
We asked twenty-one Corpsmembers in San Diego about
their journal writing. Twelve said they liked writing in
their journals, most reporting that they wrote about
daily happenings, a few saying that they wrote about
thoughts and feelings. Three Corpsmembers said that the
activity was an inconvenience, worthless, and a waste of
time. Two said they had nothing to say; what they did
everyday was boring. Three reported that they did not
like to write. One Corpsmember said he usually didn't
like writing in his journal, except when there was
an issue he thought should be brought out into the open
between him and his supervisor.
Because no particular content or form is required in
the journal, Corpsmembers and crew supervisors must
discover or invent what they can do to come up with 500
words a week. As an adult, writing with oneself as an
audience, as a record of one's life and an act of
introspection and reflection, is surely a very
specialized activity conditioned by social practice— for
example, giving teenage girls little locked diaries as a
place to pour out their adolescent secrets— and
influenced by reading, perhaps, fiction, published
journals, letters, and autobiography. Using a journal
144
as a commonplace book, a writer’s notebook, or the
currently popular learning log are all, similarly,
specialized activities. For the child who quite easily
enters into expressive writing in school, the journal is
perhaps a continuation of a conversation begun with
parents at home or with the teacher in the classroom--a
conversation that the child eventually carries on with
herself. The writer’s notebook or the learning log
assumes an outcome. Writing to learn suggests there will
be some benefit in learning, perhaps some application of
what has been learned.
While, of course, all Corpsmembers reflect on their
lives, few feel the need to do so in writing. Like most
adults, they are unfamiliar with the idea of writing to
learn and have little incentive to do so. The most
common advice Corpsmembers get about journal writing is
just to write about what they do each day. Neil’s entry
which we published in a newsletter is fairly typical,
recounting several days on "spike” away from his home
center:
Today we the great crew 4 were cleaning a stream
which was clogged with stuff like logs etc. from our
heavyest rains. Crew 2 has had different jobs such
as floods slides etc. but today after 1 coke, a hot
pastrami and a snack, they have the nerv to tell us
that there is raw sewage. but first we went to Vet
auditorium in santa rosa. we went to Bodaga By help
clean up there then we came to Pacifica. where we
145
cleaned up a house track with a footor more of mud.
After we got done you could even see the concrete
side walks they also had a roadster semis etc.
Francis/Mike drove U hauls around pick up trash such
as rugs etc. Sunday is our last day here then
Monday/Tues off but we have to be ready to the delta
Project.
Neil's narrative, though in some ways quite
different from Keith's confession of personal and family
problems, is like Keith's a story of struggle and
success. Neil's crew is "great" and definitely better
than Grew 2. Neil reports his work in terms of
accomplishment, clearing away more than a foot of mud
down to the concrete side walks. His last sentence
suggests that he is already looking to the next Project.
While a journal entry like Neil's may be seen as
expressive, unpolished, personal writing for an intimate
audience, again, it may be also be equated with more
public genres. It is in one sense, like Keith's
narrative, a "success story." It resembles in workplace
writing the report of a finished project. One way, then,
that Corpsmembers can make sense of writing 500 words a
week is by "buying into" the value of "put it in
writing." Those Corpsmembers who said they liked writing
in their journals seemed to see value in recording what
they did each day, seeing their work in terms of
accomplishments and obstacles overcome.
14- 6
This kind of journal writing as an exercise fits in
well with the on-going project of the CCC to inculcate a
disciplined work ethic. Jim, a project coordinator, drew
a diagram for a workshop newsletter connecting writing
and literacy to a number of slogans he uses to motivate
Corpsmembers. These include:
Eight hours work for eight hours pay.
Challenge yourself.
Believe you can.
The future is now.
Leave a legacy.
Make a difference.
Give meaning to your life.
Good feeling for completing a task.
When all else fails, work.
Jim connects learning to read and becoming literate
with other positive qualities such as being productive,
being helpful, getting along with others, and having
pride. Journal writing is part of this disciplined
effort. While on one level, the personal narratives
Corpsmember write may seem primarily self-expressive and
reflective, they in other ways often reflect the most
optimistic "mythology" of the CCC, the story of
transformation, success. Richard, for example, writes:
Befor I heard about the CCC's I try to chang my act
I was in gang’s and drug and dranking a lot I drop
out of school six grade and whent back to school
7,8,9 grade then whent to the 10 grad I got kick out
of school. I was out of the hole year of the 10
grad then I when back in the 11 grade. Then a frand
tol me about the C’s. I was hire I whent to the
1 4 - 7
academy 3 week in sesson 74- thene whent to San
Francisco I dint like it. I transfer to San Pedro
now I am doing very good in it.
This mythology is of course shaped by the fact that
many Corpsmembers do "improve" their lives and the
transformation story does provide a framework for
personal reflection. On the other hand, this mythology,
at the same time, helps shape daily activities and
relationships by holding out a "pay-off” for "hard work,
low pay, and miserable conditions," for following orders
from supervisors.
Literacy as a discipline, then, is one way of making
sense of daily writing. A smaller group of staff
supervisors, perhaps a quarter of those we worked with,
found another benefit in journal writing as an additional
means of communication with Corpsmembers. In this case,
again, while perhaps the journal does encourage
self-reflection and writing fluency, the key factor of
importance to the participants is relationships. These
staff supervisors reported that Corpsmembers on their
crews used the journal to write about personal problems,
complain about others, get angry at the crew supervisor
and other staff. While committing oneself to paper can
be risky, it can also be a safer way to communicate. The
writer has time to control her version of the story. She
has distance from the reader's reaction and can tell all
14.8
of her side of things without interruption. Face-to-face
confrontation on a work crew can be threatening to both
the Corpsmember and the supervisor. The journal is a
more private forum. These supervisors stressed how
helpful journals are in getting to know Corpsmembers
better and in providing greater insight into what is
going on in the crew. Supervisors who were able to use
the journal in this way tended to see their role
primarily in terms of teaching and corpsmember
development rather than simply as work overseers paid to
build park trails. These crew supervisors more often saw
their crews1 daily work activity as a means to an end,
training and development, rather than as an end in
itself.
Some Corpsmembers and staff, then, are able to
"naturalize" the requirement to write 500 words a week.
For others the task of writing for oneself and an
audience of one other, a work supervisor, is unlikely to
promote writing. Those Corpsmembers who truly write as a
means of self-reflection and self-expression often keep a
personal diary or journal apart from their required
writing. Others, essentially non-writers, are unlikely
to be motivated by the vague prospect of increased
writing fluency and will do the minimum to fulfill the
writing as discipline requirement, generally coming up
14-9
with daily schedule entries along the lines of "I got up.
I went to FT. I ate breakfast. It was hot. etc.” While
some Corpsmembers will produce expressive writing that is
personal, revealing the speaker, and displaying a close
relationship with the reader, many will not.
Yves, a Corpsmember I worked with for several months,
is a good example. Yves is twenty-one, black, lives in
south-central Los Angeles. He is a "man of words,”
dramatic and well-spoken. Only a few days after joining
the Corps and starting to come to our classes at USC, he
was already hanging out with our most vocal and visible
Corpsmember-students, the group that gathered at the end
the hall each morning to smoke and to observe and comment
on the passing scene. Despite his verbal ability, Yves
reads and writes at a level that would probably be
described as about third grade. When he wrestles with
reading and writing tasks, he gets frustrated and angry.
When Yves joined my tutorial group, he showed little
interest in producing the kind of "expressive” writing
about personal experience that engaged some of the other
Corpsmembers. Although Yves had no hesitation in
expressing his opinions or conflicts face-to-face, he did
not feel that his personal life was any business of the
CCC staff or even other Corpsmembers. In an audio tape
made by Yves and some of his end-of-the-hallway partners,
150
they scorn those Corpsmembers who spend a lot of time
talking to staff, who "be all up in they faces."
Initially, Yves was interested in "moving up" in the
Corps. But he was more conscious than most of the gulf
between his reading and writing skills and those valued
by the job market. From one perspective, writing was too
difficult for him and took too much time to be "wasted"
on a peripheral task like keeping a journal. Yves wanted
to know how things "really" worked in the Corps. He
asked me and other Corpsmembers about what crew leaders
did, asked me to get some of the forms they used, and
chose to try to write an accident report as his first
writing task with me.
This does not mean, however, that Yves was interested
only in "functional" writing. His major project in the
writing workshop was a series of interviews with other
Corpsmembers. Yves proved to be a skillful interviewer,
effectively adopting the persona of a television news
commentator and probing to develop multiple perspectives
on questions such as whether the Corps prepared people
for other jobs, whether supervisors treated Corpsmembers
fairly, and how individuals were selected for promotion.
I transcribed portions of these interviews as reading
material for our group. While Yves might have written
about these questions in a .journal, his crew supervisor
1 51
did not encourage him to do so, and, further, Yves was
unlikely to enter into dialogue on these issues with a
superior whom he mistrusted. Yves needed to check out
his own perceptions with other Corpsmembers.
Yves, in his experience as well as in his interviews,
reveals that, of course, relationships between "workers"
and "management” are often conflicting; that job
advancement is not always "fair;" that what counts as a
"good worker" is necessarily a subjective judgment.
While "journal writing" seems a fairly innocuous activity
it is never just "added on" to other activities and
relationships in the "CTs." This goes beyond saying that
supervisors and Corpsmembers have to be "motivated" to
spend time on writing, or that they have to see value in
literacy, or that this literacy practice has to be made
"relevant" to their immediate concerns. What I am saying
is that this, like other literacy practices, has to fit
with how supervisors and Corpsmembers view their
day-to-day work, their places in an organizational
hierarchy, their relationships to one another, and the
kinds of written forms— narratives, reports,
dialogue— appropriate to these interactions.
"Process" strategies practiced in workshops— ways of
generating ideas, of writing to learn, of responding to
encourage more writing— were useful to writers. However,
152
to a degree much greater than we originally imagined, any
change in literacy practices meant at least some change
in the way supervisors and Corpsmembers interacted* For
some crews, especially those run primarily as work gangs
with heavy top-down discipline, to involve Corpsmembers
either in the routine writing shaping work activities or
in any meaningful way with keeping a journal would have
required a radical altering of the ecology of the
workplace. Supervisors of these crews often themselves
felt powerless in the bureaucratic hierarchy, not so much
participating in the systems of organizing, reporting,
and evaluating activities and people as oppressed by the
organization, working like the Corpsmembers themselves
under the same conditions of "hard work, low pay,
miserable conditions." To be expected in this situation
to develop one's literacy skills:seems only one more
burden to be endured for minimum wage (Holzman
"Educational Aspects of Volunteer Corps").
By contrast, the classroom workshop in the Model
Literacy Project, offered during the regular, paid work
day, seemed to open up a space in the system to focus
more particularly on the individual and to shape reading
and writing to individual uses and purposes. As outlined
at the beginning of this chapter, however, the writing
workshop has its own structuring premises. And, in_______
153
actual practice on a day-to-day basis, the classroom must
confront many of the same issues of hierarchy,
organization, and relationships, that are of obvious
concern in the workplace. This structure will be
discussed in more detail in Chapter Five using as
examples Model Literacy Project classroom workshops and
an extended project developed from the classroom and
carried over into the workplace.
154
CHAPTER FIVE: BEYOND PROCESS PEDAGOGY:
THE WORKSHOP CLASSROOM RE-EXAMINED
A major purpose of our workshops with CCC staff was
to explore ways of promoting literacy education in "real
life” workplace contexts and to do away with some of the
problems of working in an "artificial” classroom setting.
However, as we developed a better understanding of
day-to-day work in the CCC, we came to value again the
benefits of designating a separate time and place solely
for literacy education. We recognized the advantages of
the classroom as a real context in which teachers and
students may focus directly on individual development and
on reading, writing, and talk as means for reflecting on
experience.
At the same time, however, our work with Corpsmembers
highlighted some of the largely unexamined assumptions of
the process workshop classroom. These include
assumptions about individual purposes for writing, the
value of writing to the individual, and the ways in which
meaning is negotiated. Even more importantly,
Corpsmembers force us to consider how authority is
constituted in the classroom and how it is supported by
institutional structures. The unexamined assumptions of
the process workshop lead to contradictions within the
academic classroom and to practical problems when
155
teachers, consultants, and students attempt to apply
process strategies in other settings like the workplace.
Conflicts which may be submerged in interactions between
mainstream students and teachers in traditional academic
institutions become apparent when we step outside that
specific context.
My purpose in this chapter is to reaffirm the
advantages of the classroom as the scene for literacy
education while at the same time exploring its
constraints. I will begin by acknowledging the benefits
of a process workshop with an emphasis on "writing as
discovery,” but outline some of the conflicts raised by
this attitude toward literacy education. I then want to
examine these conflicts in two extended examples. In the
first, the assumptions of the academic classroom are
brought into focus when discussions of writing in a
college workshop are contrasted with similar discussions
in the adult literacy project. In the second case, the
problems of moving process strategies out of the
classroom are illustrated in an experiment in workplace
literacy education. Finally, the contrast between
literacy education in the academic classroom and in the
GCC reveals not only how these two contexts are different
but how they are alike as workplaces. The classroom
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ideally values those aspects of literacy outlined in
Chapter Four:
1. Individual performance
is emphasized.
2. Writing is primarily organized by
reflection and logic.
3. Writing as an activity
and as a language modality is
focused on directly.
4-. Literacy practices are seen
to have generally positive effects.
On the other hand, the classroom ijs also a workplace
operating within a bureaucratic framework, and,
therefore, like the C's concerned with hierarchy, with
relationships, with getting the job done, and with the
negative as well as positive results of literacy
activities. This view of the classroom explains why
change in education is difficult as an emphasis on
development clashes with workplace expectations.
Making Meaning in the Writing Workshop— From Expressive
to Expository Writing
C.H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon in Rhetorical
Traditions and the Teaching of Writing do an excellent
job of summarizing the benefits of the process writing
workshop drawing on previous work by Peter Elbow, Donald
Murray, Stephen Tchudi, Ken Macrorie, Ann Berthoff, Janet
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Emig, James Britton, and others. They point out some of
the strengths of the classroom setting as an environment
for writing:
‘School is a place in which learning is encouraged
through repeated opportunities to confront new
experience, new information, and to test ways of
ordering it, making it comprehensible through talk,
through argument and negotiation, through
mathematical reasoning, through artistic
expression— and through writing. School supports
intellectual and imaginative investigation for its
own sake, recognizing that the chance to explore and
experiment, to confront experience in different ways
and from different perspectives, leads to
conceptual, emotional, and moral maturity, the
highest goals of educational (108-109)
The writing workshop can help young adults discover
their own purposes for writing and support intellectual
and imaginative investigation for its own sake.
Knoblauch and Brannon recommend a pedagogy that assists
writers in discovering what they have to say to a "real
but nonauthoritarian teacher-reader" and a group of other
students in a "community of learners." On the one hand,
this emphasis on discovery and investigation for their
own sake gives students a great deal of freedom.
Knoblauch and Brannon insist that in order to pursue such
investigation it is crucial that teachers "trust
students' abilities to discover their own stances on
important questions," to develop their own "responses to
persons, events, and situations, to probe, to create
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significance, to discover coherence" (108-111). This is
especially important to young adults who do have a store
of past experience and are struggling to shape their
lives.
Expressive writing, "close to the self, revealing the
speaker, verbalizing his consciousness, displaying his
close relationship with the reader" (Britton 227), is
emphasized as a starting point for this process of
discovery. As discussed in Chapter Four, Keith’s story
of his struggle with alcoholism seems an example of this
kind of writing. The writing is intensely personal; the
language is closely related to Keith’s oral style; he is
willing to share this writing only with an audience he
knows face-to-face. However, literacy workshops that
center solely on expressive writing run the risk of
becoming group therapy sessions characterized by high
energy discussions that may be therapeutic, but are
often, ultimately, unsatisfying both to students and the
teacher interested in developing active
literacy— writing, reading, and critical thinking. To
counteract this, Knoblauch and Brannon stress that
writing in the workshop, especially writing about
personal experience, ought to require from students
"disciplined intellectual and imaginative effort, not
self-indulgence, a pose of authenticity, or an adaptation
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to somebody's Rules" (111). One of the important things,
then, that adults might DO with reading and writing is to
examine their experience from a critical distance.
This obligation, however, for the workshop to be at
once student—centered and critical puts both teachers and
students in somewhat conflicting positions. The teacher
must, on the one hand, trust students’ "natural"
abilities and, on the other hand, push them to
disciplined efforts. Students must write in a way that
appears to derive from authentic personal purposes and to
communicate meanings they themselves have discovered, yet
not appear to be self-indulgent, posing, or imitative.
In the workshop, teachers and students know they have
succeeded when they have, in the words of one
Corpsmember, written "until it make sense." Whether and
how a piece of writing makes sense is to be negotiated by
the writer, the community of student readers, and a
teacher whose authority is supposedly legitimized not
only by her status in the school or the social system but
by her greater experience as a member of the literacy
club.
Although the writing workshop relies heavily on group
process activities, groups tend to function as aggregates
of individuals with each one expected to work his or her
way through a complete "writing cycle" from "prewriting"
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to ’ ’editing." -During this process, the work of each
individual can be negotiated in the classroom community.
However, the kind of community standards described in
Brannon and Knoblauch are by no means universal. It is
clear that although they reject the conventional forms of
the school essay— thesis statement and five paragraphs,
and traditional teaching through assigned topics and
outlining— the club they belong to still bases its
standards on traditional Western essayist literacy. The
writing they value most is the result of "the process of
making and connecting assertions to achieve a coherent,
even if necessarily inadequate finished discourse" (70).
This is writing shaped by the writer's own intention, his
sense of audience, and the constraint of "entailment."
Viewed from the standpoint of product, entailment
describes a pattern of interrelated assertions
perceived to be coherent as a line of reasoning, an
orderly movement of mind. Viewed from the
standpoint of process, it represents an intuition
that something "ought" to follow, not merely from
the preceding assertion, but from the context of
related assertions which has developed up to the
point of making the next one. While the process of
inferring/asserting connections moves writing
forward sentence by sentence, the constraint of
entailment insures that the whole discourse is
animated by its own distinctive logic of
interconnection. (70)
In constructing these logically connected chains of
assertions, writers presumably discover connections they
were not previously aware of, develop new knowledge, new
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insights. Readers value texts that give them new
information, lead them to make new connections. The text
itself is the focus of the interaction between the writer
and reader. Even though students and the teacher may
negotiate meaning face-to-face in the workshop, students
are expected, as much as possible, to contextualize
meaning explicitly within the text.
The Literacy Club: "Rules'1 of the Game
This may seem heady stuff for adult literacy classes,
for adults categorized, perhaps, as "functionally
illiterate." On the other hand, we know that although
adults expect to DO things with reading and writing, the
things they expect to do are not solely "functional,"
related only to having a job or solving day-to-day
problems. Corpsmembers explain some of the purposes they
find for writing:
When I remember to write I like to write so I can
keep up with my skills and express how I feel by
putting it down on paper. (I enjoy) writing for the
newspaper so everyone can read it. Paul
Its good to keep a record of everything you did or
do so you can remember Manuel
I've always like writing especially songs. other
people do it. So why can't I do it. Writing songs
is something I enjoy doing. No one showed me how to
write. I would get my book and pen and start
writing. Sometimes I would write anything that
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comes to my head. and again I would write until it
make sense Clarence
^Making sense means making connections, and this Is,
certainly, one.of the sources of the power of literacy. \
This connection-making, however, does not take place only
abstractly in people’s heads or on paper; it is on-going
as an activity in the writing workshop. Although the
workshop overtly focuses on writing itself as the primary
activity of participants, in fact, from session to
session, writing operates as it does in the workplace in
concert with ongoing interactions and with oral language,
the primary medium of instruction. When teachers and
students do see themselves as less or more experienced
members of a similar literacy club, typical classroom
attitudes toward literacy— the emphasis on individual
performance and writing itself as an activity and means
of reflection-- may take on the force of tacitly shared
"rules" framing this interaction.
In the adult literacy workshop, however, these
"rules” may not be taken for granted and may, in fact,
work against the interests of non-mainstream students.
This becomes more apparent in an analysis at a "micro"
level of interaction in an adult literacy workshop when
compared with similar Interaction in college writing
workshop classrooms. The comparison between an adult
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literacy workshop and a college writing workshop is
especially appropriate in the USC-CCC Model Literacy
Project. During the year that Corpsmembers were coming
to USC several times a week to meet in small groups with
instructors, the Freshman Writing Program at the
university was also moving increasingly from a whole
class to a small group workshop format. Instructors in
this program were being encouraged to restructure their
classes so that instead of meeting twice a week with
twenty-two students, they would break the class into,
perhaps,, five groups that would meet once a week for an
hour. Corpsmembers and college freshmen are about the
same age, late teens and early twenties. All of the
teachers in the Model Literacy Project (MLP) also taught
in the Freshman Writing Program (FWP). In both settings,
teaching focused on writing as a process, with time in
small groups spent motivating reading and writing,
generating ideas, and responding to texts written by
students.
However, small group workshops tended to proceed
rather differently as "events" in the MLP and in FWP.
Erving Goffman, drawing on Gregory Bateson, suggests that
at least one element of people’s "frame" for a particular
activity is the answer to the question, "What’s going on
here?” We know that the answer to this question might be
164.
quite different for people from different ethnic, social,
or educational backgrounds even though they all seem to
be involved in the "same" activity. Instructors in both
the MLP and in FWP took steps that for them marked the
boundaries of an activity framed as small group
discussion or small group instruction in a writing
workshop. For example, they asked students to meet them
in a particular room at a particular time. Chairs were
arranged around a table or in a small circle. Students
either brought written materials with them or materials
were distributed to them. During the fall semester in
1983, I audio-taped several sessions in each setting.
Every session in both settings began with some
explanation from the instructor of the purpose or
procedures to be followed that hour.
Despite the type of "success" stories recounted in
Chapter Four, Corpsmembers frequently did not, of course,
automatically enter into this "frame" initiated by the
teacher or would "break out" of the frame initially
established. Corpsmembers might seat themselves several
feet away from the group or sit turned away from the
group. During the course of discussion, a Corpsmember
might begin to read a magazine, start a conversation with
a friend walking by, or occasionally leave the table to
look out the window— behavior that teachers reacted to
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either with confusion or disapproval. Several teachers
in MLP declined to be audio-taped on the grounds that
they or their Corpsmember-students could not maintain
group discussion or would be unduly intimidated by the
tape recorder. But other groups in the Literacy Project
welcomed taping, treating at least some aspects of the
session as a "media event" and spontaneously breaking
into imitations of sports announcers, newscasters, or
talk show hosts.
Students in USG Freshman Writing, while sometimes
limiting their participation to very brief responses to
direct questions, never during observation and taping
broke out of the conventional frame of "group
discussion." While some initially expressed mild anxiety
about being taped, all thereafter pretended to ignore the
tape recorder.
Certainly, there are some obvious features of
setting, activity, and role relationships that structure
the "ecology" of the workshop in each program. Plainly,
the university setting and the activities of going to
school, improving reading and writing, talking with a
teacher and peers will be perceived differently by young
adults enrolled as regular students and by young men and
women from the surrounding inner city neighborhood.
Freshman Writing students have at least tacitly agreed by
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their presence in the university to apprentice themselves
to the norms of that community. Because their
instructors have the power to evaluate them, these
students are strongly motivated to figure out the frame
in which the instructor is operating and to enter into
it, to at least appear cooperative.
Corpsmembers, on the other hand, although they were
required as part of their employment to attend literacy
classes and were on paid time, were not "graded" on their
participation. For many of the Corpsmembers their
previous school experiences and their current day-to-day
contacts with government agencies, businesses, the CCC
itself, and other representatives of mainstream society
have been often frustrating and demeaning. Corpsmembers,
though roughly the same age as USC undergraduates, are
already self-supporting adults, some with children of
their own. They arrive at USC dressed in their work
uniforms in vans that after an hour of class will take
them to a worksite for a day of very strenuous physical
effort. Because they work together daily, Corpsmembers
often know each other well. There is certainly tension
among ethnic groups, black, Latino, Asian. The white
graduate student teachers are generally perceived as
unfamiliar and advantaged. Corpsmembers are interested
in, among other things, improving their reading and
167
writing skills, learning more about the world and
themselves, staying out of trouble, projecting a positive
self-image, coping with work and family responsibilities.
The graduate student teachers are, in fact, similarly
motivated. These goals, however, may conflict with each
other, and individual and group frameworks for achieving
these goals can conflict. When these conflicts occur it
may be difficult for individuals to initiate and to
maintain interaction.
Teachers, nonetheless, in both settings tend to push
for the view of literacy I have outlined as typical of
the process workshop. Although students are meeting as a
group, teachers tend to focus on the progress of each
individual through a writing process; they tend to push
for writing that is reflective, that makes new
connections; they work to keep the group focused on texts
under discussion, and they stress the benefit of writing
both as a useful skill and, even more, as a tool for
thinking.
These tendencies are evident in the day-to-day
interaction that goes on in small groups as in the
following examples. This interaction, while attempting
to model a particular type of "expository talk" and
writing especially valued in academic settings, may also
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continues but participants seem to be acting in rather
different frames of reference (Gumperz). In both the MLP
and FWP, a typical small group process was to encourage
students to produce a draft of an essay, often initially:
expressive, drawing heavily on personal experience, and
then to push students to be more explicit, to recognize
the logical implications of statements and produce
evidence to support them. The following excerpts from
Freshman Writing are typical. Four students, regular
undergraduates at USC, and their graduate student
instructor are discussing a paper Donna has written about
problems after minority students were bussed to her
school. In the first example the teacher does most of
the talking. In the second, a student comments.
Example One--Freshman Writing Program
Teacher: Umm I think the point about their being unhappy
though and everyone else being unhappy is well
made (.) you have to be a little aware that it
- the argument does fly in the face of what is
a - a large problem though that people living
in ghettos are unhappy also
Donna: Mmm
Teacher: and you might - you know - in a sense there’s
an implicit comparison there that you never
make explicit - you were happier without them
being bussed'and they were unhappy there but
that doesn’t mean they were more unhappy where
they were (.) unless you have some evidence to
support // that
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Donna: // (soft) right. I guess I was just saying
that new problems arise besides the old
problems.
Example Two— Freshman Writing Program
Janice: I agree the personal experience adds a lot of
credibility to the issue - urn (.) I think you
should have specified - um - who was being
bussed in. And you said "to us" but you didn't
specify who "us" was (.) I don't know - it just
- I mean you know it's usually black and white
but in some areas there are Hispanics and
Orientals
Donna; (very soft) leh
Janice: and stuff too. I don't know about Maryland.
And umm -and uh you got your point across (.)
so (.) uh
Teacher: O.K. (very soft) Dennis?
In FWP, talk in the small group workshop tended to be
controlled by the teacher allocating turns to the
students. Turns often alternate between relatively long
and very short, with longest turns held by an individual
explaining a point or position and very short turns
accepted as responses to direct questions. Example One
illustrates the emphasis on the logical implications of
assertions within the written text and the importance of
making arguments explicit. The responses of students in
Freshman Writing indicate that they themselves are often
aware that being explicit is important in this context.
Their comments, like Janice's in Example Two, frequently
170
can be seen as an attempt to imitate those of the
instructor. Although everyone, including the teacher,
agrees that Donna' s personal experience adds "a lot” to
the paper, the discussion generally proceeds in fairly
formal, impersonal tones. Assertions based on personal
experience are judged in terms of the coherence of an
overall argument. The focus of the discussion is on
Donna's text. The teacher's "O.K. Dennis" is intended to
shift the focus to the next composition. This move by
the teacher to keep students centered on the written
texts is typical in both Freshman Writing and MLP
workshops.
In a third example, however, from a Model Literacy
Project workshop group, the teacher's shift from a
discussion of a local high school back to a
student-written essay is met with a loud sigh and
Corpsmembers quickly move the discussion back to a more
personal basis.
Example Two— Model Literacy Project
Teacher: O.K. - well let's see - look in this next - the
second paragraph is a real long one. Is there
anything in here that (.) needs to be worked on
or doesn't make any sense? / er?
? : (Audible sigh)
(.)
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Teacher: I don't see anything myself* (.) what about when
she says, "Also the teenagers of the 80's
should not be compared to those of the 60's
because//.
Karen: //That’s right. (.) They shouldn't. Because
back then they - I look at Happy Days and
Joanie she did her homework
Deanna: (laughs)
Edward: (smiles)
Teacher: (laughs)
Karen: Her mama would tell go do her homework she did
it but now (.) you got to lock the kid up in a
room make them do th- homework=
Deanna: =ah kids get away with murder not
Karen: mmuh
Teacher: But!//
Deanna: //My mama says she used to get whipped and =
Karen: =My mother told me when she was coming up she
didn't even know what sex was
Teacher: (laughs) But now would your parent have grown
up in about the sixties or//
Deanna: //Yah
Teacher: //Yah?
Karen: //mmhum
Teacher: //about in the sixties
Deanna: //yah
Karen: And she didn't even know what sex was (.) and
my auntie she told me she didn't even know what
drugs was (.) and my sister knows what drugs
are and she ain't nothin but seven or six
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When Corpsmembers entered into discussion in writing
workshops, they generally competed more vigorously for
the floor resulting in more instances of overlapping
speech. Turns were exchanged more rapidly not
necessarily controlled by the teacher. Speakers tended
more often to assert their points rather than merely
present them. They more often introduced personal
experience and told personal narratives, often in a
dramatic style. While Corpsmembers in taped sessions
often used strategies of what Brown and Levinson label as
positive politeness, they, unlike FWP students, rarely
used those of negative politeness (Brown and Levinson).
This means that Corpsmembers did on some occasions
minimize disagreement by first agreeing with or
validating another speaker's point, they tried to draw
other speakers into the group, and they echoed key words
and slang terms that reinforce group solidarity. They
did not, however, generally hedge or minimize their
statements with "I think," "maybe," "I guess," etc.
Like students in FWP, Corpsmembers introduce evidence
to elaborate and support what has been written, the
assertion that "...teenagers of the 80's should not be
compared to those of the 60's.." The evidence is drawn
from television, from personal experience, and from
authority, people known to the speaker who actually lived
173
in the period in question. The writing provides an
occasion for discussion related to day-to-day life; less
emphasis however is placed on the terms of the argument
within the written text. David Olson, George Dillon, and
others attempting to define a Western essayist tradition
point out as characteristic that the relationship of the
text to the world of action is subordinated to the
internal arguments, the internal arrangement of the text.
This focus on logical coherence is more common in
Freshman Writing workshop group discussions. A focus on
personal experience and the world of action is more
common in workshop discussions in the MLP and is
maintained not only by students but taken up by
instructors as, for example, when the teacher asks at the
end of the third example if Karen's mother actually grew
up in the sixties.
"Elaborated” vs. "Restricted" Codes/ Expository Talk
From one perspective, the way language is used to
negotiate the meaning of texts in each of these settings
might be related to Basil Bernstein's discussions of
"elaborated" and "restricted" codes. Corpsmembers in
taped sessions do, as Bernstein might predict, tend to
speak in shorter turns, to use less elaborate sentence
structure, to engage in less extended argument, and to
m
use what might generally be described as more
conversational strategies. Statements by students in
FWP, while certainly not necessarily more abstract or
thoughtful, do tend to be more often couched in terms of
thinking and ideas and of hypothetical possibilities.
While speakers in both settings resort to stock
arguments, there seems in FWP a greater tendency to tease
out the implications of these arguments. A review of
taped sessions in the Model Literacy Project suggests
that teachers may simply have difficulty recognizing
points being made or following their construction over
several turns and certainly have difficulty asking the
relevant questions that might provide the scaffolding in
which the speaker could examine his or her own
conclusions.
Bernstein relates the degree to which individual
speakers control different uses of language to
differences in social class background, indicating that
while all speakers routinely use the restricted code
those from middle class backgrounds are as a function of
social roles more likely to gain control of the
elaborated code and use it in appropriate situations.
However, from my comparisons so far, I do not mean simply
to grossly contrast young adults in the CCC and at the
university. Students in both settings come from a wide
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variety of backgrounds, and control a wide range of
language variation; differences within each group are as
great as any differences that might be pointed out
between groups. What seems most constant is the
teacher1s push toward and modeling of language which
following Bernstein is sometimes called "elaborated," but
which I think in school settings might more usefully be
called "expository" talk. This is talk essentially
controlled by the teacher, in which the student speaker
is expected not just to communicate ideas but to display
knowledge in appropriate ways. This talk is, I believe,
especially important to writing instructors because it
moves toward a literate model and reinforces the style,
content, and persona students are often expected to adopt
in their essays.
Stressing individual intention, individual
meaning-making, individual discovery in the classroom
does in one sense free the individual. On the other
hand, it also means that each student can then be
evaluated independently, that individual "disciplined
effort" can be assessed, and that students can be sorted
on this basis. "Writing to learn," and "writing as
discovery" can be tests as much as the five paragraph
essay, and students can be increasingly sorted along a
continuum from those who will, in fact, use writing in
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order to organize new information and make management
decisions, and those who will be expected simply to
follow directions.
The amount of weight the teacher carries as an
authority because of her position in the educational
establishment and the larger society is either
underestimated or underreported in descriptions of the
workshop classroom. In discussions of writing workshops
from Donald Grave's accounts of second graders to
Knoblauch and Brannon's college writers to some of our
own accounts of model literacy classes, the teacher
apparently shares this authority with students in a kind
of gentlemen's agreement to earnestly and respectfully
negotiate the often conflicting claims of writers and
readers. Under this arrangement, the writer must appear
authoritative, yet, still, must tailor that authority to
meet the expectations of the teacher. This may be easier
for more traditionally mainstream students like those in
Freshman Writing. The fact that FWP students have made
it to the university indicates that they are generally
"better” at the whole business of school and school talk.
As college freshmen they are generally willing to the
play the game if they have to, to enter into "contrived
situations" if necessary in which students write and talk
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about writing mostly in order to earn a grade for now and
as trial run for "real writing" sometime in the future.
Beyond that, research on child language acquisition
does suggest that middle-class children are in many ways
encouraged to play the role of being powerful, being
authoritative within a supportive framework provided by
parents and teachers. Most importantly, they learn the
appropriate verbal strategies for displaying power and
authoritative knowledge in mainstream society and are
rewarded for doing so. Other researchers, notably Labov,
Heath, Scollon & Scollon, Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz,
demonstrate that this is often not true for children
outside the mainstream. While these children too learn
successful strategies at home, their strategies may not
fit in with those accepted as appropriate by school.
School for these children does not encourage them to feel
more confident or competent; instead, the school
reinforces their position of powerlessness within
mainstream society.
While intellectual and imaginative investigation for
its own sake may be thought central to the highest goals
of schools, this investigation also represents in a sense
a fall-back position. If writing cannot accomplish any
other work in the day-to-day activity of the school or
community, what is left but intellectual and imaginative
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investigation? Writing to make yourself "smarter" in
the sense of discovering new connections, new knowledge
is only likely to be taken on as a purpose in settings in
which getting ''smarter" is rewarded. While this is held
out as a goal in the classroom, the connections rewarded
by the teacher may be those she anticipates students will
make. What purpose can there be for non-mainstream young
adults to once again apprentice themselves in the role of
expository talkers and writers? The situation of the
workshop group though "real" is at the same time
contrived in that there is no purpose or audience outside
the group itself. If all my audience is present to me
face-to-face, why must I contextualize my entire
argument, or my narrative within my written text? Why
not assume common knowledge, the stock arguments I know
my audience shares with me? Why abandon conversational
strategies that are so successful?
The Reality of the Classroom
Two ways out of or around this sense of the literacy
classroom as contrived or artificial have been first, to
reemphasize the "reality" of the classroom "community" as
a setting for writing, and secondly, to appeal to the
"reality" of the world outside the classroom. As
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reiterated by Knoblauch, and Brannon and the sources they
draw on for the idea of the workshop classroom, students
and teachers can certainly function as "real1 1 readers and
writers; intellectual investigation is certainly a "real"
purpose for writing. "Real," however, may be equated
with "natural" or "normal," a sense that students only
need to be freed from previous "bad" classroom learning
or reminded to read each other’s texts as it is imagined
they might read a magazine article outside the classroom,
reading primarily for "meaning" rather than to critique
form and surface structure. Of course, students must be
trained to be the kind of readers who might facilitate
further writing in the workshop classroom; the ideal
posited in the literature seems to be readers who are
essentially good-willed, who at least try to work up
genuine interest in what the writer has to say, and who
generously try to examine the preconceptions they bring
to texts while critically pressing writers to reflect on
their biases. Greg Myers in an article in College
English points out how this necessary training somewhat
distorts the notion of community— not as some
practicioners may claim, returning authority to students,
but instead even more forcefully embodying the academic
standards of the teacher in the peer group itself, a
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group that can press with more weight on the individual
writer than the teacher can alone.
Of course, there is nothing necessarily wrong with
this. No reading is natural and surely a major purpose
of writing classes, especially in universities, is to
confirm students in the expectations of an academic
community. The difficulty, a point Myers makes, is when
teachers forget this is only one way of reading and that
within the so-called academic community itself standards
are diverse. Within this community and in any workshop,
readers are not always ideal, may be hostile,
uninterested, dishonest, and certainly bring to texts
preconceptions and biases that cannot always be brought
to conscious awareness.
As I suggested earlier, all of this may not be quite
so difficult when teachers and students are members of
similar "literacy clubs," sharing unspoken expectations.
Creating a "community" of readers and writers becomes
more difficult with diversity. Myers and others have
noted that process pedagogy and the workshop classroom
have developed historically during a period in which
teachers were struggling to work with an influx of
non-traditional students as a result of open enrollment
policies and to mediate between these students and the
"standards" of colleges and universities. In the MLP
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workshops, because young adults were not seeking entrance
into any particular academic community, even greater
diversity was possible for teachers as well as for
students.
A romantic interpretation would be to say that within
this diversity young adults and teachers were free to
discover their own purposes and develop their own
standards. Instead, in the MLP each participant brought
his or her own preconceptions to the workshop and daily
practice developed from interaction. As a result, no
startling new pedagogies were developed. When purposes
are multiplicitous, almost every strategy ’ 'works" some of
the time for some individuals. Some Corpsmembers
responded by pouring out writing for a sympathetic reader
really curious about what it is like to be a teenager in
central Los Angeles in the 1980's. Some Corpsmembers
found in the workshop the opportunity to spend time
writing poetry or a play for an appreciative audience.
Some wanted to be "students" again and asked for
vocabulary lists and punctuation exercises. Others read
and discussed literature. Many days people were too
upset about family problems or problems on the job to
spend much time actually reading and writing. Most days
writers tended to procrastinate; to "kick back" for a
while at eight in the morning with a full day of work_____
182
ahead. Teachers put on the pressure to get things
started; some days teachers were irritable and got angry;
Corpsmembers felt pushed around and were hostile.
Corpsmembers may or may not have long-term interests
in becoming "more literate" or have a plan for improving
their job status. While the literacy workshops may have
been particularly opportune for those already considering
or engaged in continuing their education, others
developed an "interest," just as I could imagine myself
under certain circumstances developing an interest in
learning, for example, to ski, though at present I don't
envision this as something I might do. Micheal Holzman
in an article about the MLP, "Teaching Is Remembering,"
argues that when Corpsmembers took up literacy tasks in
the workshop, it was at least partly because of "...our
willingness to give up the protection of our roles as
teachers, to remember each of them [Corpsmembers] as
individuals, to agree that our relationships are
personal" (235). This is somewhat disingenuous. With
the luxury of a class size ratio of one to five or six,
interaction was necessarily personal especially given
Corpsmembers' inevitably greater interest in day-to-day
activity and relationships as opposed to abstract,
academic uses of literacy. While teachers were certainly
not in the traditional mold of Mr. Gradgrind and did
183
often share their personal lives and those of their
students, they could not give up their roles as teachers.
They retained, no matter how willing they were to share
it, the authority and the responsibility to plan
activities, to convene and dismiss the group, to shift
its direction. Corpsmembers, certainly, could resist and
shape the teacher’s efforts, but the balance of control
in the group inevitably tipped in her direction. As
Larry Cuban points out, the difference in roles in the
classroom is plainly illustrated in the difference
between the consequences of one student being absent and
that of the teacher being absent.
Further, I believe that MLP teachers, even those
radically opposed to the social structures that oppress
non-middle-class, non-white youth, continued to value as
aspects of literacy education individual effort and
development, reflection and critical thinking, writing
itself as an activity, and the positive benefits of
increased literacy to the individual. Process pedagogy
including free writing, brainstorming, expressive
writing, peer response, peer editors, "works" just as
well to produce a pamphlet criticizing the LAPD as it
does to produce an academic term paper.
The answer to engaging especially non-mainstream
youth in literacy education cannot be either insisting on
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the "reality" of the classroom situation or attempting to
"give it up." The idea of "active literacy" that I have
introduced is helpful. It means, I think, reclaiming the
notion of literacy as "functional," continuing to ask
what young adults might DO with literacy while
recognizing that the purposes of individuals in groups
are varied, that the teacher acts as a particularly
strong member of the group, and that the claims within
and between individuals are often conflicting. The
analysis of how literacy is functioning is recursive,
examining the "rules" and "resources" that structure
particular activities and the ways that literacy
activities themselves mediate structure. I think it is
fair to look for engagement and involvement as criteria
for judging literacy activities in the classroom, the
ways in which young adults actually take up and develop
reading and writing tasks. To say that students and
teachers can, of course, be real writers and real readers
and have real personal relationships is to say that they
can take on activities and interactions in the classroom
with a sense of fulfilling their own felt needs and
purposes. These activities and interactions, however,
will inevitably be both facilitated and limited by the
structure of the classroom and classroom assumptions
about literacy.
185
Classroom Practice and the "Real” World
Appealing to the wider community beyond the classroom
is a second way literacy education attempts to side-step
the contrived, artificial, perhaps, even the alienating
features of the classroom workshop which emphasizes
"expository talk" and writing. The appeal to the "real"
world outside the classroom is especially evident in a
"case" approach to teaching writing and in other kinds of
assignments asking students to play "real" roles for
"real" audiences, for example, writing a letter to the
college president or, perhaps, as a college president to
a parent. Given this context, writing can be shaped and
evaluated by the demands of the rhetorical situation.
Myers, again, points out that this approach also raises
questions of values, questions of whether the standards
of the workplace or of published Writing are in some way
"better" than those of the classroom, whether they are
appropriate or useful for guiding the work of students.
Further, this approach with students and teachers playing
at being business persons or public officials can, of
course, be just as artificial and contrived as more
traditional assignments and carry the added burden of
asking writers and readers to model contexts about which
they know very little. Nonetheless, we were most__________
186
successful in the classroom workshops in engaging readers
and writers in "real” genres, in producing interviews,
pamphlets, plays, speeches, songs, and especially a
newspaper publishing essays, anecdotes, reports of
current happenings, poetry, etc. I will say more about
this as part of the recommendations in my conclusion.
However, beyond bringing ’ ’real’ 1 genres into the
classroom, we too were enticed by what, romantically
perhaps, seemed the richer reality of day-to-day life in
the CGG especially as compared to a fairly
anemic academia. As we saw in Chapter Four, the workday
in CGC seemed to offer many opportunities for "real"
writing though only some Corpsmembers were involved. My
colleague, Frank Gaik, and two members of the CCC staff
at the Del Norte Center decided to develop a strategy for
involving all Corpsmembers in writing as an activity
which, unlike the journal, would be closely related to
day-to-day work. The result was a "project log" to be
completed each week by each Corpsmember. After a trial
at Del Norte, the idea of the "project log" was
introduced to CCC staff around the state in literacy
workshops, and they were encouraged to try it with their
crews. Like the journal, what is interesting about the
project log is not simply whether it worked or not to
engage staff and Corpsmembers, but what assumptions it
187
made about work and writing and how these were taken up
by crews who did adopt the log.
The project,log is a form that basically asks the
Corpsmember to report on his or her current work project
as in the following example:
PROJECT LOG REPORT Aug 1-3,84 Roland P
DATE NAME
PROJECT NAME Kelly Lake Fish Habbitate STARTED Aug 6
FINISHED Aug 10
SPONSOR NAME, CONTACT Bill D. CREW NO. 3
CREW LEADER Bob
1. PROJECT PURPOSE (DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE REASON FOR
THIS PROJECT) We put twenty logs in Kelly Lake for fish
habbitate so fish can have a place to hide.
2. SKILLS USED AND LEARNED (INCLUDE: A. TOOLS AND
TECHNIQUES, B: USE OF MEASURING OR PLANNING SKILLS, C.
RESPONSIBILITIES OVER ANY PART OF THE PROJECT, D.
INDEPENDENT) Well I never put logs into the wated before
We all look out for each other as alwas
3. SAFETY (INCLUDE: A: PRECAUTIONS TAKEN, B: SPECIAL
PRECAUTIONS TAKEN BY PARTICULAR CORPSMEMBERS, C: LESSONS
LEARNED FROM "CLOSE CALLS," D: YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF YOUR
FELLOW CORPSMEMBERS SAFETY HABITS.) Well we are wore
live vests win we where in the water and Mark all most
got hurt we where trying to but this big log in the water
and all of a sudden it moved a I told Mark to move
because he was sopost to stop one side of the log so it
would go strate and he just stude there and it rolled on
his foot luckaly he tured with his foot and we all rolled
it off he was o.k.
4. ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT (IS YOUR WORK
CORRECTING NATURE'S FORCES OR THOSE OF PEOPLE? WILL IT
HAVE MORE OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL OR A SOCIAL IMPACT? HOW
WILL YOUR WORK AFFECT THE SURROUNDINGS 20 YEARS FROM NOW,
ILQ.Q_YE.ARS FROM NOW? )____________________________________________ _
188
Well it's sopost to help the fish but before we left
there was some kids playing on the logs so I dont know
5. PUBLIC CONTACT (EXPLAIN ANY CONTACT YOU HAD WITH THE.
PUBLIC DURING YOUR WORK.) There was a few people evey
once in a while and some said that we where doing a good
job and they said that they thought we done strem cleares
with big machines they where really supprised
6. CREW PRODUCTIVITY (INCLUDE: A. HOW PRODUCTIVE DO YOU
THINK YOUR CREW WAS IN WORKING ON THIS PROJECT? B.
COMPARED TO OTHER PROJECTS THE CREW HAS WORKED ON?) Well
I be honest the frist day was a big miss every or most
every one was complaning about something or another but
that night Martin talk to us all set some rules and toll
everyone that we would all take tures at everything.
7. PROJECT VALUE (WHAT IS THE VALUE OF THIS PROJECT FOR
A) THE SPONSOR, B) THE PUBLIC, C) YOUR DEVELOPMENT?
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THIS KIND OF WORK FOR A LONG TIME?
WHY OR WHY NOT? E) HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO OTHERS YOU'VE
DONE?)
Well I had fun and the oldys said we got lucky because we
didnt have to go fare to work 1/4- mile or so but for the
purpose I don't think it was so great for the environment
I think people are going to use them logs for a diving
bord and all those pore salamaders we killed when moving
the logs and the sponcer said all those fish are going to
die to start all over hopefully with no catfish.
8. MAP SKILLS (DRAW A MAP THAT LOCATES WORK AREA. USE
ENOUGH ROADS AND LANDMARKS SO THAT YOU OR A FELLOW
CORPSMEMBER COULD FIND THE WORK SITE FROM THE MAP.
ESTIMATE MILEAGE.)
The project log attempts to imitate the relationship
in the workplace between writing and work activity, but,
instead, in many ways embodies the assumptions of the
classroom. Although it attempts to be "realistic" in
focusing attention on stated goals in the CCC— an
emphasis on productivity, learning new skills, working
189
safely, and developing conservation awareness, it is
artificial to work activity in the CCC in that it asks
each individual to report on, and, hopefully, reflect on
the work project. In the hierarchical workplace, it is
not necessary for each worker to be involved in
evaluating projects, and, indeed, this activity takes
time that could be given to more "useful" labor. Program
planners naively envisioned that the project log could
be "fitted" into "teachable moments" during the regular
work day while Corpsmembers traveled to and from the
worksite or during "down time,1 1 periods of waiting for
materials or tools, days when the work task is finished
early. There are, however, no "empty" spaces in the
workday and Corpsmembers rightly resented adding an
"exercise" in writing even if it was work related or was
added at time during which previously they were only
talking, resting, or listening to the radio.
"Realists" might say, again, that of course these
adults will not be interested in writing in the
khaki-collar workplace any more than they would be
interested in dressing up in tuxedos and speaking French
on the job. However, this view is mistaken for two
reasons. In the first place, it takes the "reality" of
the workplace as "given" and relatively unchangable
rather than as structured in day-to-day interaction.______
190
Secondly, it perpetuates the equation of literacy with
the desire for membership in an exclusive club rather
than as a power to be exercised in day-to-day activity.
In at least two Centers, crews do make use of the project
log or a modified version of it. These crews "frame”
their workday experience rather differently from those
who experience writing by Corpsmembers as an unnecessary
exercise and waste of time.
The log "fits" into the structure of the workplace
when it functions not as an end in itself, simply as
practice in reading and writing, but when it serves to
focus the occasion for talk about day-to-day activity.
The writing itself is mediated by this talk. The
majority of the Corpsmembers would have difficulty
answering many of the questions on the project log by
themselves. Writing focuses and helps Corpsmembers
prepare for "tail-gate" talks about ecology, problems on
the crew, the purpose of the work being done.
Crew supervisors who find the project log useful tend
to take this kind of interaction as central to their job
which they view not just as completing conservation
projects but also as promoting individual development.
It is tempting to relate this way of thinking and talking
about work to what Shirley Brice Heath calls literate
behavior— using language to reflect on experience, to_____
.191
talk about abstract topics, to view experience critically
("Being Literate in America"). . During the literacy
workshops for CCC staff, we asked each participant to
write a "literacy autobiography." Not surprisingly those
staff supervisors who found the idea of the project log
most congenial were often those who seemed to equate
their own literacy with the exercise of a power in the
world. As Shirley Rose noted in research done at TJSC,
this idea of autonomy may be revealed in a moment of
conscious recognition reported in a literacy
autobiography. Marguerite Dailey, for example, who
supervises a crew at Camarrillo Center, describes it this
way:
When I was a kid I read Black Beauty all by myself.
Then I knew that I could read.
And even though I was slow I began to read
more and more. In high school English
we had a reading contest on reading the most
books. I wasn't (still) the fastes reader
but I was on the top 10 list.
For Dennis Davis, this recognition meant a conflict:
With one word from my 11th grade teacher my
interest in writing was born. She was young and
pretty but it was "in" to hate her. We brutalized
her daily but she endured. Secretly I admired her.
She told me I had talen. Didn't she realize I was a
Jock? How could she say such a mean thing to me. I
pretended not to care but I remembered.
For these crew supervisors, they can make the
project log "fit" as part of a management style that
192.
encourages participation by Corpsmembers. This style is
explained by staff members from both humanist and
functionalist perspectives, again reflecting the dual,
sometimes conflicting, themes of promoting individual
development and producing useful work and workers. One
of the C’s founders, Robert Burkhardt, now executive
director of the independent San Francisco Conservation
Corps, sounding the humanist note, popularized in the CCC
the concept of "thinking workers" "seeking art in their
daily tasks." He explains, "When one is working on the
construction of a playground for infants in the suburb of
Los Angeles, a demand to understand, even adhere to a
world conservation strategy may seem excessive. To a
thinking worker, it is not. Personal growth and
production both benefit when the context of a task is
understood." Other staff members, especially those with
previous job experience in the military, the prisons, or
Youth Authority may have difficulty imagining inner city
youth cutting a fire break "seeking art in their work."
They may, however, accept that people work better when
they understand and "buy into" the purpose of a project.
Functionally, it can be argued that participation by
workers in planning and evaluating projects increases
efficiency. This view is supported by reference to
193
Japanese industry and the introduction in some American
factories of "quality circles” and work teams.
The point needs to be made that this participatory
style of management, a strategy of "responsible
autonomy,” is not necessarily liberatory as opposed to
the strategy of "direct control” through a rigidly
maintained hierarchy and close supervision of every phase
of labor. As in the classroom, the peer group may
effectively embody and enforce the authority of the
supervisor and the organization (Giddens 210). On the
other hand, participation in decision making and the
literacy associated with directing people and work seems
more likely to encourage active reflection and greater
control of one's day-to-day activity.
Roland P.'s project log indicates the critical
possibilities that inhere in reflection on work
experience. He contrasts the stated purpose of the
project, creating a fish habitat, with his actual
observation of results— people using the habitat logs as
a diving board. He also considers environmental side
effects— killing salamanders and fish. He reports on how
problems in getting the job done were resolved by setting
rules and establishing procedures. Of course, the same
kind of analysis of a work project could be and often is
done through discussion, not writing. The advantage to
194
writing is in, again, more explicitly focusing talk. As
Louise Wetherbee Phelps argues, "the specific quality of
writing as a basically visual system of representation"
gives it great potential for composing meaning, allowing
the writer to fix in place connections that can be
interpreted and reinterpreted by both the writer and
readers (37). While it is typical of management in a
very practical way to interpret the meaning of written
plans and proposals in relationship to work activity and
to draw meaning from work activity in written reports and
evaluations, it is not common for Corpsmembers to do
this. The greatest value of the project log and
activities like it is not in the act of transcription or
even of composing a particular log, but in its symbolic
value representing Corpsmembers' participation in
composing the meaning of their work.
This would, perhaps, be a romantic view of the power
of literacy except for the fact that in the bureaucratic
workplace literacy is_ associated with power and status.
The person in charge does carry the clipboard; the
administrative offices are awash with paper; the worker
in the field responds to rather than composes written
messages. While literacy activities are in a sense
symbolic, they are not merely symbolic. They take value
only in repeated interactions. I hesitate to______________
195
characterize these interactions in terms of ’ ‘literate
behavior” if it suggests a grand dichotomy between
literacy and illiteracy, between those who behave in some
literate fashion and those who do not, between belonging
to the "literacy club” and not belonging. On the other
hand, we did find a wide range of attitudes and behavior
in the way work crews operated from center to center and
even from crew to crew— from crews and centers where it
was common to discuss and learn more about ecology, job
skills, and interpersonal relations, to others that more
or less prided themselves on a "no-nonsense" attitude of
work hard, collect your pay, and play hard off the job.
This "no-nonsense" orientation fits with Corpsmembers’
lives as unskilled labor during their one year in the
Corps. It teaches them not only to accept but to find
value in "hard work, low pay, miserable conditions" and
to look outside their work for most satisfaction in life.
The "Miller time" mentality might possibly be acceptable
if Corpsmembers could in fact after leaving the Corps
find full-time unskilled employment that paid a living
wage; however, as I outlined earlier these jobs are
increasingly scarce. Focusing only on the immediate work
situation seems not useful for Corpsmembers who will be
unemployed again at the end of the year.
196
Once again the attitudes of Corpsmembers and crew
supervisors are not strictly a matter of choice or
personal preference. The way literacy activities are
structured in the workplace, as discussed in Chapter
Four, works against attending directly to literacy or to
the development of each individual. As my adult student
wrote about literacy, "It is not allways first on my
mind." Functional literacy education has focused on
teaching explicitly in the classroom literacy tasks from
day-to-day life and the workplace. When these tasks
which are often performed tacitly in daily life are
focused on directly in the classroom they are not
necessarily more "realistic" or more motivating than
presumably less functional skills, writing poetry, for
example. Unless these tasks are to be taught as isolated
exercises, teachers and students must work to
recontextualize them either by actually making them of
use in the classroom (for example, by looking up programs
in the TV guide and posting a list of the week's "best
bets,”) or investigating in discussion and writing how
the task works in daily life. (How do children choose
the shows they watch? What might be the advantages for
using a written guide? What opportunities does this task
offer in the classroom for a more critical assessment of
the meaning of television?) Alternately, specific tasks
197
and skills can be, and, of course, are taught and learned
both tacitly and explicitly each day in the workplace.
These tasks and skills, however, will be restricted to
particular individuals and the current work situation as
given. This is efficient for literacy in practice, but
from the perspective of literacy education restricts the
potential of many individuals to develop new uses for
literacy and new meanings through literacy.
The School As a Workplace
In the workplace, as might be expected, the potential
for literacy education even in a job training program is
limited by practical concerns about how time and
resources ought to be allocated, about how to most
efficiently complete work tasks, about matching work and
training to the skills individuals seem to bring with
them. What is striking, however, is that although the
workplace and the classroom seem to operate from very
different assumptions about literacy activities, in
day-to-day operation the circumstances that structure
these activities are very similar. This is not
surprising when we consider that the public school
classroom is itself a workplace in a bureaucratic
hierarchy. Institutional factors which seem ' ‘natural” in
limiting literacy education in a work setting are more
198
problematic in a setting which presumably takes literacy
education as one of its primary functions. These factors
seem more significant than questions of motivation,
values, or identity in determining membership in the
"literacy club." I want to draw some parallels between
constraints on literacy education that seem "natural" in
the workplace and those, that shape practice in
classrooms.
Staff supervisors in the CCC complain that, while
they are certainly interested in Corpsmember development,
they often simply do not have time to do more than
address the task at hand. When people spend a week of
eighteen hour days sandbagging in a flood, they have
little time or inclination to discuss or write about the
personal and social implications of their work. Each
center is expected to document that Gorpsmembers spend at
least seventy per cent of their paid time performing
useful conservation work. This does not include work
done at the Center on maintenance, food preparation,
clerical chores, etc. Once this work is figured in,
there seems little time in the paid work day for strictly
educational activities. The "literacy environment" of
most centers is minimal, providing few of the
resources— books, magazines, newspapers— associated with
literacy. While all centers have libraries, they are_____
199
usually dusty rooms of donated old books located in
corners so out of the way that Corpsmembers only frequent
them to smoke marijuana or engage in other illicit
activities.
In my experience working with teachers from the Los
Angeles Unified School District through the California
Writing Project, their view of the constraints on
literacy education in the classroom is remarkably similar
to that of work supervisors. The main rationale,
especially from elementary school teachers, for not
engaging students in more reading and writing in the
classroom is that they do not have time. On the face of
it, this seems surprising since students spend six or
seven hours a day, five days a week, for twelve years in
the classroom. However, studies have documented that, in
fact, students do spend very little of this time actually
doing extended reading or writing (Applebee). The
restrictions teachers complain of are familiar to anyone
acquainted with urban schools— much time spent on
classroom management, testing, and record keeping; a set
curriculum that divides the school day into twenty minute
blocks of time each devoted to a different ’ ’subject;"
old, out-of-date textbooks; shortages of paper, pens,
pencils; dusty, antiquated school libraries often closed
because there is no longer funding for school librarians;
200
certainly, no funding for classroom libraries of
paperback books or for magazines and newspapers.
But this is only one side of the story. Time and
resources are limited, and, certainly, inadequate for
reaching many of the stated goals of each institution.
However, the allocation of time and resources is
variable. Production figures clearly are not absolute in
the CGC; crews work on projects for "sponsors,'1 state and
local agencies who have work to be done. How fast they
complete a project is always negotiated; some Center
Directors and Project Supervisors take a more generous
view than others of the amount of work that constitutes
seventy per cent of Corpsmember time. One Center finds
enough time to allow their least educated Corpsmembers to
spend one morning or afternoon a week of paid time in an
adult education classroom. Also important, as we have
seen, is how that time on the job is "framed.” M.J. as a
crew supervisor sees as part of her "regular" work day an
impromtu discussion with Corpsmembers of the
environmental impact of a fast food hamburger in a
styrofoam container. Her Center expects supervisors to
give Corpsmembers a "lesson" in ecology at least once a
week and in their work reports to explain briefly what
they did. This is considered part of the job. In our
literacy workshops, we discovered from some Center_________
201
Directors that the state organization actually allocates
funds each year for magazines and newspapers at Centers;
other directors were simply unaware of these funds. One
center moved books out of the library and into racks in
the cafeteria; in Los Angeles, we placed magazines in
plastic boxes in the vans taking Corpsmembers to and from
worksites. In both cases, circulation dramatically
increased.
This is not to say that the constraints spelled out
by "middle management" employees— crew supervisors in the
case of the C's, and teachers in the school— are
imaginary and could be wished away by more positive
"framing." Crew supervisors and teachers may experience
little control over the circumstances of their work.
Work in school as in the CCC tends to be measured in
identifiable units-— number of pages completed, number of
words correct on a spelling test, number of minutes "on
task" in a given subject, number of points scored on a
standarized test. Jerome Harste reports on his work with
teachers in Indiana, and I find this true as well, that
many teachers (and the administrators who evaluate their
work) simply have difficulty seeing a trip to the library
or time spent by students in self-selected reading as
"real" work. Teachers have no control over the way funds
are allocated to their schools and little control over
202
how they are allocated within the school. It is typical
for teachers to be presented with textbooks costing
thousands of dollars selected by someone else and to be
unable to request even fifty dollars for books the
teacher or students might select themselves.
Again, the problems are well-known, but, as I
discussed in Chapter Two, they cast doubt on who might
claim membership in the "literacy club." Literacy in
schools as well as in the CCC is actually likely to
spiral downward as much as upward. On the one hand,
increased bureacratization and "dumbing down" of work
allows the C's to recruit the least educated youth and
employ staff with minimal education. At the same time,
the lower the skills of Corpsmembers and also of staff
coming into the C's, the less likely it is for Centers to
push technical training, to make reading material
available, to offer activities at the Center that are
"educational," to include Corpsmembers and middle-level
staff in decision making, and, further, the less likely
it is that Corpsmembers and staff will expect such
inclusion. Indeed, they may even resist anything that
seems reminiscent of school.
Similarly in the schools, children with the poorest
skills are the least likely to be engaged in active
literacy. Recent test scores from Los Angeles Unified___
203
School District indicate that while inner city children
do progress in basic decoding and encoding in grades K-3,
their scores after the third grade decline as they begin
to be tested on application and comprehension. While the
results of standardized tests may be debatable, studies
of classroom activity repeatedly show that the poorest
readers spend the least time actually reading.
CCC staff and teachers themselves may not be much
engaged in active literacy beyond minimum workplace
duties. Interactions involving literacy tend to occur
spontaneously on crews where the supervisors often read
or write themselves. For one supervisor, it seems
natural to bring the newspaper along in the van each
morning and pass out sections to the Corpsmembers as he
reads it himself. Other supervisors take books along as a
matter of course on one or two week "back country" trips,
lend books to Corpsmembers, suggest books they may want
to read. Some keep journals and are enthusiastic about
the benefits they gain personally from this practice.
They feel comfortable about helping a Corpsmember write a
letter or fill out a form.
For teachers, even if they read or write much in
their daily lives, students are unlikely to see them
doing so. In the classroom, teachers read and write
almost exclusively to manage children^ lessons and keep
204
records. As I outlined in Chapter Two, teaching does
little to activate teachers’ literacy skills, especially
writing, beyond those acquired in college. Almost all of
the reading and writing concerned with establishing
policy and curriculum or with the daily management of
schools goes on outside the classroom. The workday of
teachers, with no planning time at the elementary level
and an hour a day primarily for record keeping in the
senior high, does little to promote extended reading,
writing, or reflection.
In these features that structure literacy activities,
the concerns of the school and the workplace converge.
While the school seeks to promote the development of each
individual, it simultaneously evaluates and accustoms
them to their place in a hierarchy. While written
language in the school is valued for its potential for
reflection and generating new meanings, it also regulates
and is regulated by activities and relationships.
Students fill in on worksheets answers already known to
the teacher both as a discipline and so that she can
check what they know. The sorting of workers by and for
literacy tasks in the workplace seems efficient. It
seems more questionable to me that the same type of
sorting into reading groups is the most efficacious way
to run a first grade classroom or that the hierachical
205
structure of the educational establishment is the most
advantageous way to run schools.
Studies of writing in the workplace by those in
composition suggest how "real" writers work in a variety
of settings and ways in which we can relate classroom
practice to day-to-day activity. We ought not, however,
rush to embrace this reality. Perhaps, the greatest
value to such studies is not as a guide to our practice
but as a contrast to it. In such contrasts, "familiar
possibilities leap out" as assumptions and activities
requiring explanation. Developing the literacy project
with the CCC gave us the opportunity to critically
examine literacy practices within one organization
employing young adults who have had the least success in
school. More importantly, perhaps, the project provided
a new perspective to critique practice within our own
familiar possibilities.
206
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In my concluding remarks, I would like to briefly
outline some of the implications for practice that I
believe result from our experiences in the Model Literacy
Project. I want to focus here on some of the more
specific things that we as teachers and researchers
learned from the project both from the perspective of the
classroom workshop and in general program development.
Once again, these lessons for me were sharpened through
contrast as I saw strong parallels between the problems
we faced in working with the California Conservation
Corps and the problems of the public school teachers I
worked with as director of the USC/California Writing
Proj ect.
How well did the Model Literacy Project work for
young adults? We have as evidence of "success"
enthusiastic final evaluations by Corpsmembers and CCC
staff; observation by CCC staff and by us of a general
high level of involvement (for example, improved
attendance, fewer "sick days" during literacy spikes);
certainly, individual anecdotes and testimonials; and,
perhaps most convincingly, the products produced by
Corpsmembers. We do not have test scores. During our
initial summer and school year project, we argued over
207
the issue of testing and decided against the idea of
bringing Corpsmembers onto the university campus and
immediately subjecting them to a battery of pre-tests, so
we could later post-test and generate data. For my own
group of beginning readers, instead of testing I had
available a wide range of material from the first Laubach
initial literacy booklets (though I did not use their
methods) to high interest paperbacks written at sixth or
seventh grade levels, and general interest magazines. As
each Corpsmember entered our small group, I was able to
leave him alone to take as much time as he wanted to look
over a selection of materials and then let me know which
he would like to start reading. With no classmates, to
compete with for a grade or to make fun of his choice,
every Corpsmember I worked with chose materials that were
neither "too hard" or "too easy" and each moved on to
more difficult reading over the time we worked together.
Despite the lack of test scores, we believe that
Corpsmembers who stayed in the "C's" and, therefore, with
us in the project produced written products that were
w
better at the end of a workshop or literacy spike than at
the beginning. Work collected in folders shows increased
length, complexity, and, even, in many cases, improved
surface correctness. When Corpsmembers were asked to
produce pre- and post- writing samples during a literacy
208'
spike, increased complexity was documented in an increase
in T-units. The pieces of writing published in
newsletters became more sophisticated over the course of
each workshop, and from literacy spike to literacy spike,
as Corpsmembers very early on in each spike were involved
in writing for publication. Newsletter writing got an
added boost when Corpsmembers, starting at UC Santa
Barbara, began writing on microcomputers.
To the extent that the workshops were successful, I
think we learned two main lessons about classroom
practice; first, how to avoid continually "playing
school," and secondly, the importance of having a
theoretical base that guides practice and that, in turn,
is modified to account for what is learned in the
classroom. Corpsmembers (and teachers too, of course)
although they were often not successful at school, are,
nonetheless, often adept at "playing school." In playing
school, participants view time allotted in the classroom
as something to be filled up or gotten through. Students
very often feel it is up to the teacher to make them
behave, make them work; these are efforts, however, that
students may feel almost obligated to resist. As several
recent studies of high school have indicated, harried
teachers may make tacit "deals" with students; the
teachers won't make the.classwork too difficult or
209
demanding, and students won’t give the teacher too much
trouble (Sizer, Boyer,. Goodlad). We.found it difficult
to view as successful interactions with Corpsmembers in
which they went to sleep, joked for an hour with a
friend, or abruptly left the room for a cigarette, even
though we could understand the attractiveness of these
activities and, perhaps, explain the reasons for their
"resistance."
Corpsmembers, like other students, wanted at times
that soothing sense of accomplishment that comes from
neatly filling in a not-too-demanding worksheet. Many
Corpsmembers, based on their previous school experience,
believe that this is the kind of work one is supposed to
do in English classes, that reading is largely the
process of finding the right answers to questions posed
by a textbook. On the other hand, Corpsmembers,
generally, as young adults, had less patience than
schoolroom students with more "creative" types of
busywork. My group stalled, resisted, and finally
rebelled against the hackneyed task of describing an
apple in excruciatingly minute sensory detail. Who in LA
has never seen an apple? Who could possibly be
interested in reading such a description or writing one?
Although we continued to struggle throughout the
workshops against "playing school," one way out was,
210
paradoxically, restoring an emphasis on product to the
writing process. The apple description and similar
assignments are popular with teachers because in addition
to focusing on specificity, these assignments lend
themselves especially well to classroom process
activities. Students can brainstorm and cluster
descriptive words; they can work in peer groups
dissecting the apple and generating details; first drafts
can be evaluated in read-around-groups with highest
honors going to papers with the most "vivid” language.
As a result of the "process," final drafts are inevitably
better, in the sense of being more detailed, than
descriptions students might have written simply left to
their own devices. Such exercises are often entertaining
and instructive for students who are already "hooked" on
writing; they may take pleasure and pride in a neat,
perhaps clever, finished description. However, from the
teacher’s perspective, if the emphasis is focally on
writing better description and globally on developing
effective writing processes, then the final papers, the
descriptive paragraphs hardly matter except as evidence
that the skill has been mastered, the process has been
gone through.
For students not hooked on the general goal of
becoming better writers, all of this may look like a lot
211
of trouble to produce a product that is ultimately
useless. A seventeen-year-old high school student in
honors English might have fun with such an exercise; a
working seventeen year old finds it silly and babyish.
Corpsmembers want to make things and do things. It does
not help to try and put assignments in more "real"
contexts; for example, describe this tree clearly enough
so that another Corpsmember could find it in the forest
and cut it down, or describe the type of car you would
like to buy. At best, students will perfunctorily
complete an exercise like this and if asked to make
additional efforts, will complain, 'VI did my work."
In order for Corpsmembers to take up writing tasks
they had to be absolutely "real" and in order not to play
school, they had to be set up in such a way that there
was nothing specific to be learned» no skills to be
mastered, no objectives beyond producing a particular
"useful" product— in the writing workshop, a piece of
i
writing to be read. This is a drastic position. I am
not only saying simply that students ought to write for
real audiences or have real purposes or that we Ought to
subordinate the teaching of skills to helping students
express their own intentions and meaning. I am saying
that for our least successful older students there ought
to be a complete moratorium on the idea that there is
212
anything that a teacher can single out and sequence as
something that must be learned. While we might
arbitrarily select some subset of literacy skills to be
mastered in a four-week workshop, for example, finding a
main idea in a reading selection or supporting a thesis
with examples, it is difficult to say what it means to
have ' ’mastered" such a skill, or that it is these skills
that will enable Corpsmembers to function as more
literate persons.
This is not to say, however, that Corpsmembers were
free to do whatever they liked in our workshops or that
our classrooms were particularly non-authoritarian.
Corpsmembers were expected to write. We prodded,
cajoled, complained, and insisted. In the year-long
project, the "products" Corpsmembers got most interested
in producing were a newspaper and various kinds of
performances, including songs, poems, plays, audio and
video tapes. In the month-long literacy spikes,
Corpsmembers are told at the beginning that they will be
writing for a weekly newspaper and that in a small group,
they will produce a video tape. This is definitely
school. We hope Corpsmembers will become better writers
and believe they do "improve." And we teach, arguing
about ideas, suggesting revisions, pointing out errors,
explaining about punctuation, passing out paper, and
213
collecting books. However, the emphasis on writing that
is "useful" allows us to combine the practical features
of workplace writing with the developmental
characteristics of the classroom.
We continue to value a number of the features that I
have outlined as typical of the classroom. Certainly,
individuals can and often do work alone and we are
concerned about the development of each person.
Certainly, individuals are pushed to be reflective in
their articles, stories, and poems for the newspaper; and
the monologues, interviews, discussions, and skits that
make up their videotapes. Writing, to be published or
performed, is definitely focused on directly. However,
publishing a newspaper is also seen as an activity, work
to be accomplished. Two or three Corpsmembers may work
together on an article, perhaps interviewing people about
their goals after the CCC and writing this up. As in the
workplace, one individual's expertise can function for
the group; the one who can compose the best sentences may
not be the best at transcribing them. Talking to other
people, which is either a crime in the classroom or
required as an exercise in peer groups, seems neither
disruptive or artificial as students work together to get
a job done. Relationships are important as Corpsmembers
consider what kinds of things they can say about their
2 U
bosses and other Corpsmembers, what kinds of material
might be unacceptable, might be considered racist or
sexist.
It is not too much to say that after seeing at least
one issue of the newspaper, almost every Corpsmember
wanted to write for it and that it was avidly read, not
only by other Corpsmembers, but by teachers, staff,
family, and friends. A classroom newspaper is certainly
no novel project. And, again, I do not wish to claim
that we "gave up our role as teachers," or that in some
general way, we were able to "return to students the
authority for their own writing." We were able to
dramatize, however, that we valued writing as a means of
reflection and a way of interacting with other literate
persons, and that Corpsmembers did not need further
elaborate "instruction" before they could enter this
dialogue. In this context, Corpsmembers were able to be
"real" writers with "real" readers.
What does writing for a newspaper or making a video
tape not do? It does not "turn around" the lives of
Corpsmembers, and I am extremely skeptical when I read
about general literacy programs that do, though articles
about such miracle programs frequently appear in the
popular press. We know individual Corpsmembers from our
workshops who got "turned on" to writing and learning,
21 5
who got better jobs (two of them at USC), who moved up in
the ranks of the Corps, who enrolled in community college
classes. We also know Corpsmembers who quit, who got
fired, who are unemployed, who went to jail. We helped
individuals but supporting long-range goals was not part
of what we were able to do. We tried a "career
awareness" project and, not surprisingly, discovered that
as academics we know less about the world outside school
than almost everybody. While general literacy helps,
successful jobs programs also provide counseling,
assistance with day-to-day problems like housing and
child-care, training in specific job skills, and, most
importantly, they have extensive contacts in the business
community— they know where the jobs are and who to talk
to.
We also did not directly help Corpsmembers get high
school diplomas, though whenever possible we tried to
arrange high school credit for our workshops for
Corpsmembers enrolled in adult school programs.
Credentials are important and if an adult school drill
and skill prep class can get a young person through the
GED test, it is performing a valuable service. The CCC
is rightly concerned that as many Corpsmembers as
possible earn their diplomas. However, because more than
half have already graduated from high school and at least
216
another quarter are not at a level to benefit from a
drill and skill overview of what is covered on the test,
the GED cannot be the C's only educational goal.
Because it is difficult to measure general
"improvements" in literacy or benefits from literacy
education in the short term, I think the Model Literacy
Project, underscored again for me the importance of a
theoretical base from which to develop and evaluate
practice. Teachers do in a practical, day-to-day way
measure their success in the classroom in terms of
student involvement. While "time on task" is not
everything, teachers generally do not feel successful if
students spend much time looking out the window or
throwing paper wads at each other. As I have already
discussed, not too difficult paperwork often keeps
students most occupied, but process pedagogy can also be
reduced to accomplishing this goal. When students are
brainstorming and clustering, meeting in peer groups,
revising and editing, they look busy and often the final
drafts of their papers do look better than early ones.
We need to continue to ask, however, what messages these
activities send students about what writing is and what
writing is for. Initially, in California Writing Project
workshops for public school teachers, almost the only
theory I introduced was related to writing as a process.
217
This certainly reflected current practice in the field of
composition. Increasingly, in the last two years,
however, we have spent more time discussing general
theories of language acquisition and the social context
of literacy education. We have focused more on how
classrooms and schools work for children and teachers and
on the relationships between the individual classroom and
the school system, the home, and the wider society.
Our theoretical and practical concerns about
settings for literacy education led us in the "C's" to
work directly with the central administration and staff
as well as with Corpsmembers themselves. From our
workshops with CCC staff, we learned, again often through
contrast with similar workshops for teachers, about the
importance and difficulty of understanding the
participants’ perspective and our own role as
consultants, acknowledging and dealing with working
conditions, recognizing possibilities for change, and
providing group support for action.
Working with teachers, education consultants often
assume that they know what the classroom is like, and
they feel comfortable making recommendations on that
basis. On the other hand, even though we had spent a
year working with Corpsmembers, when we approached staff
we did not feel that we "knew" what day-to-day life "in
218
the field” was like and it was, therefore, necessary that
we listen carefully to the staff’s own view of their
organization. We hoped to "institutionalize" literacy
education in the CCC by working with staff to develop
ways to promote the "active literacy" of Corpsmembers in
their day-to-day lives. We hoped that if staff members
themselves learned about and experienced writing and
reading as a processes, they would be better able to
facilitate literacy tasks in the workplace. Because the
"C's" were still relatively new to us, we spent less time
lecturing or making presentations than we might have in
similar workshops for teachers. People in the staff
workshops spent a good deal of time in small groups
discussing common purposes, problems, and strategies for
Corpsmember development, and then reporting back in whole
group sessions (see Leeson, Pro.ject Analysis for an
outline of the workshops). We tried to underscore how
the literacy activities of the staff in small
groups--reading, taking notes, making charts, writing
reports— might be extended to activities for
Corpsmembers. Our differing perspectives from the
classroom and the workplace forced all of us to consider
what assumptions we were making about the functions of
literacy in Corpsmembers' lives.
219
Further, those of us directing the workshops were
forced to consider our role as consultants, in this case
paid by a contract with the central administration of the
CCC. In our experience, some consultants, especially
supported by university salaries or research grant money,
may develop programs without any consultation with staff,
basically the approach we took during our first year of
the Model Literacy Project, and may, in fact, feel that
their major role should be one of exposing and subverting
the "oppressive" organization they have chosen to work
with. On the other hand, full-time planners and
administrators within the organization may come to accept
the structure of the organization simply as given and
view any attempts at change as unrealistic. As outside
consultants paid by the organization our position was
ambiguous. We were forced to consider the perspective of
the organization and staff, and that was beneficial. We
also were viewed suspiciously by staff as representatives ‘
of the central administration and by some factions of the
administration as fuzzy-minded academics. While it is
tempting to view consultants as relatively objective
outsiders with a special expertise to bring to program
planning, it is more realistic to recognize conflicting
goals and values, in this case between various
220
administrative factions, staff, Corpsmembers, and
consultants.
Staff members greatest concern was not over literacy,
of course, but about working conditions. The rank and
file in all organizations are rightly suspicious of
consultants because they know that the. consultants will
soon leave, probably to return to conditions more
pleasant than that of the workers they are consulting
with. That was true in our case, and we had no power
over staff duties, hours worked, bureaucratic procedures,
rules and regulations, etc. except to make
recommendations to the administration about these
matters. This is exactly the case of most consultants or
academics who provide teacher training. Working with the
CCC and then returning to work with public school
teachers emphasized for me the importance of addressing
working conditions. When teachers complain that new
approaches to reading and writing sound good, but are
impractical or unrealistic, the impulse in education is
either to dismiss teachers as unimaginative and not very
bright or to try harder to develop better methods,
cleverer strategies. Instead, we need more research
investigating day-to-day life in the classroom and how
reading and writing function there.
221
The basic format, one teacher to twenty to forty
students, is not likely to change. What kinds of changes
can teachers bring about within that format? I obviously
favor changes which encourage children to take on a good
deal of reading and writing which becomes increasingly
complex in content, forms, and surface features over
time. Almost all of the teachers I have worked with in
the California Writing Project agree that to some extent
the kinds of changes teachers can bring about depend on
the teacher’s own sense of authority within the
educational establishment. I want to emphasize that this
"sense of authority" is not just a psychological trick.
A workshop, like a religious revival meeting, can make
people feel empowered, but that feeling can quickly fade
after the return to the ordinary routine. Teachers I
have worked with who have consistently changed their
classrooms over the last three to five years attribute
their persistence and success to several factors. Very
important is a growth in knowledge, a theoretical base
from which to explain and, as is frequently necessary, to
defend their practice to students, parents, other
teachers and administrators. Second is some support even
if expressed in small ways in an amount of money allotted
to a special project, an occasional period of release
time, or recognition within the system. Teachers working
222
for change either have, or sometimes change schools to
find, at least one encouraging administrator, or take on
quasi-administrative roles themselves as coordinators or
chairpersons. These teachers also continue to exchange
ideas with other like-minded teachers either through the
Writing Project itself, professional organizations,
school district programs, or unions. While teachers
welcome practical suggestions about what to do on Monday
morning, recipes can only contribute to lasting change
when they show what a theory might look like in action.
This summer for a five-week California Writing
Project workshop, we asked the president of United
Teachers Los Angeles to spend a morning discussing with
us current political issues within the Los Angeles
Unified School District. It is not enough to discuss
abstractly with teachers the political nature of literacy
or the general social context of American literacy
education. Instead, it is necessary to help people
examine more specifically the organizations within which
they work. Teachers in the workshop were interested to
consider that although the status quo is strong, power is
constantly negotiated in the school district, changes are
made, rather ordinary individuals negotiate these
changes, and that teachers can and do make many decisions
themselves.
223
What about changes at the level of program
development as a result of working with the CCC? It is
difficult not to conclude that the CCC is, in the main,
wedded to an unnecessarily rigid "chain of command"
organization that often demoralizes staff and, in turn,
Corpsmembers. "Old timers" like to reminisce about when
the organization was smaller and had a greater sense of
mission and unity. This may be somewhat romanticized,
but certainly, now, the CCC's combination of military and
Boy Scout organization has been overlaid with a strong
business management philosophy aimed at efficient
control. This philosophy emphasizes the "bottom line"
and the work ethic, downplaying Corpsmember development.
One success for the Corpsmember Development Office has
been the promotion to that office of a staff supervisor
we worked with closely who has a strong interest in
literacy. He sponsored this year a literacy conference
for other staff especially interested in education who
had been brought together for the first time in the
literacy workshops. The most important result of our
project with the CCC has been establishing literacy
spikes. Our colleague Judith Rodby overcame convoluted
bureaucratic hassles within both the CCC and in
universities arrange for as many Corpsmembers as possible
to participate in three or four week literacy workshops
224-
on college campuses. She has established procedures for
doing this within both the University of California1s and
the California State University’s systems.
The Model Literacy Project has also led to several
similar programs including a project with California
Employment Training, with programs for single parent
minority mothers, and with the newly formed Los Angeles
Conservation Corps, a program that hopes to achieve many
of the goals of the CCC but without the cumbersome
bureaucracy.
Each of these projects is an experiment, not an
experiment one group of people performs on another, but
an experiment for everyone involved— program planners,
teachers, workers, students, staff, young and
not-so-young adults. In the last analysis, the question
of whether or not the experiments "work” is, perhaps, the
wrong question. Though a national advertising campaign
encourages us to "give the gift of literacy," literacy
cannot be simply given, conferred, or even imposed. We do
things with literacy. With these literate acts, we
change ourselves and others. Literacy education needs to
focus on how reading and writing function in day-to-day
life, including life in classrooms, what literacy means
for individuals and groups of people, how literacy
practices change, and how these changes affect the lives
225 '
of all those involved— -parents as well as children,
teachers as well as students, bosses as well as workers,
program planners as well as program participants.
226
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