School Literacy, Reasoning, and Civility: An Anthropologist's Perspective Author(s): Frederick Erickson Source: Review of Educational Research, Vol.

54, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 525-546 Published by: American Educational Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1170173 . Accessed: 08/07/2013 11:49
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Review of Educational Research Winter, 1984, Vol. 54, No. 4, Pp. 525-546

School Literacy, Reasoning,and Civility: An Anthropologist'sPerspective

Frederick Erickson Michigan State University This papertakes a perspectiveon schools, teaching,and learningthat places in the social organization and culturalpatterning of people'swork in the foreground everydaylife. In that perspectivethe notion of literacy,as knowledgeand skill of taughtand learnedin school, is not separablefrom the concretecircumstances from the situationof its its uses inside and outsideschool, nor is it easilyseparable acquisitionin the school as a social form and as a way of life. The school can be thatembodiesindividual andgroupinterests seenas an arenaof politicalnegotiation and ideologies. It is reasonableto expect that various kinds of literaciesmight a varietyof interestsand be embeddedin a varietyof belief systems. represent We can distinguishanalyticallybetweenliteracyand schooling,or betweenthe and schooling,or betweenthe latestmanifestation, arithmetical analog"numeracy," "computerliteracy,"and schooling. In ordinaryusage, however,the distinction between formal knowledgeand school is blurred.This may be for good reasons, some of which I will explorein the discussionthat follows.Literally, literacyrefers to knowledgeof lettersand of theiruse in readingand writing, just as the uglyword numeracyrefersto knowledgeand use of numbers.But to be letteredmeans more of European schools than this, and has done so in the West since the establishment in the earlyMiddleAges. by the monasticchaptersof cathedrals Literacy,as being lettered,has to do with strategyand prestige.This prestigeis partly due to the strategicpower that comes from mastery of an information communicationsystem. This prestigealso is derivedfrom values of aestheticsand moralvirtuewhich maskthe issue of power.Indeed,in 17thcenturyEnglish,to be but to be unlettered.It is only later in lewd is not to be sexually unrestrained, took on sexual became that lewdness connotations,which gradually Englishusage the main usage. of schoolingalso mixes powerwith the justificationof power The prestigefulness in morality.One is remindedthat in the West, the institutionof schoolingbegan in the medievalChurch,with literacy knowledge justifiedas a meansto specialized that could be employedin maintainingthe intellectualand social structureof the Church,which was seen as a means to collective and individualsalvation. The same specialknowledgeof lettersand numberswas also employedin maintaining whose growthand whose systemsfor distribution the rule of secularlandholders, of food enabledthe existenceof feudalsociety itself. In colonial New Englandthe institutionof publicschoolingwas alsojustifiedon moralgrounds,with knowledge of lettersbeing the routeto individualsalvationthroughreadingthe Bible,and the same specializedknowledgeapplyingin the developmentof small freeholdagriculture, commerce, and eventuallyindustry.In the comments that follow I do not want to reduceschoolingto a set of purelyutilitarianfunctions,nor do I want to betweenthe variousutilitiesand moralitiesof do so with literacy.But relationships 525

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FREDERICKERICKSON

kinds of schooling,kinds of literacy,kinds of work, and kinds of powerin society arecentralto the argumentI will make.Let me beginwitha few narrative vignettes. A. Literacyin a Steel Plant In 1965 I workedfor a steel company in Chicagoin helpingto organize and conducton a pilot basisa program of on-the-jobtrainingfor high school The was a steel firm in whichbarsand sheets dropouts. company fabricating of steel werecut to orderedlengthsand then shippedto buyerswho used the steel in manufacturing. The programinvolved educationin basic academic skills and work experience.The curricular emphasisof the programwas the resultof an informalanalysisby companymanagement of the reasonsbehind the highturnoverof over 200 minorityworkers,largelyblack,who had been hired over a 2-yearperiod. Most of these workersquit or were firedbefore havingworkedin an entry leveljob for 6 months. Absenteeismand lack of the elementaryand reading computationalskills necessaryto read work ordersand to measureand cut quantitiesof steel were reportedby foremen and by plant managersas the majorcauses for the brevityof the careersof the new minority employees of the company. Accordingly,a programof trainingin basic skills was established,duringwhich the traineeswould be requiredto come to work every day, on time, and learn in the plant how to workthe machines,and in the classroomhow to readand compute. As I worked with the trainees it became apparentthat very few of the dozen traineeshad muchtroublewith reading workorders,or with measuring lengths of steel. Three of the trainees did have difficulty with this that persisted.The others learnedvery quickly to measureand cut steel and to read the lengths and numbersof cut pieces that were writtenon the work orders.As the weeks progressedit also became apparentthat the trainees experiencedrecurrentdifficultieswith their foremen and fellow workers, almost all of whom were Middle Europeanimmigrantsor the childrenof immigrants.The traineeswere criticizedfor talking unintelligiblyand for like lazy postureswhile workingon standingin what looked to supervisors their machines.Foremenwould come by and say things like, "Get moving,
you . We're not paying you to _ _ ." After a few weeks

most of the traineesbecame convinced that most of the white supervisors At the end of 12 weeks some of the traineeshad and workerswere "racist." quit, some had stayed.All but one, to my knowledge,were able by then to readwork ordersand cut steel. Most had been able to do this at the outset. B. Literacyin a High School Night Program Two of the steel companytraineesdecidedthat they would enrollin night school classesto begin again to work for their high school diplomas.I took one of them to registration one evening. He went throughthe registration and signedup for an Englishcourseat the junior level, whichwas procedure the level at which he had dropped out of school 2 years previously.The followingweek, on the morningafterthe young man had attendedhis first eveningclass I askedhim what they were assignedto do. With despairin his eyes he said, "We'rereadingBeowulf." C. Literacyon Ice In the summer of 1981, while teaching at the University of Alaska, 526

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PERSPECTIVE AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S

who was now goingto college I met an Eskimoin his mid-thirties Fairbanks, and whose father had been a subsistence hunter. The son still hunted occasionally.He said that as a child he learnedthat "if you want to hunt seal you have to learnto think like a seal." As an anthropologist my main questionsabout literacyand numeracyare these: Given that for approximately5 million years human societies have managedto rear their young so that almost every one in the society was able to master the knowledgeand skills necessaryfor survival,why does this not happenin modern but societieswith schools?Or does it happen-do schoolsteach what is necessary, define and measureachievementin such ways that it looks as if largeproportions of the school population fail? Why is it that when we know that the cognitive operationsnecessaryto learn to speak a languageare masteredby almost every child by age 5, many of those same childrenseem unableto learnto readin school, even thoughthe cognitivecomplexityof learningto read,at leastat the earlystages, to learnto speak?Why can a child make change is so much less than that required successfullyat the grocerystore and fail to do those same arithmeticoperations correctlywhen presentedwith a math worksheetin the classroom?In current and skillin decoding aboutliteracy,arewe talkingaboutknowledge publicdiscourse as a marker of social class status "lettered" about we or are letters, being talking and culturalcapital?Do we see the school diploma mainly as evidenceof mastery of knowledgeand skill in literacy,in the literaland narrowsense of the term?I don't think so. I thinkthatthe highschooldiplomafunctions,forlow SESstudents, primarilyas a docility certificate.Wereit otherwise,privateindustrycould not be contentto allowpublicschoolsto producegraduates-potentialfutureemployeeswho cannot read,write,or do simple arithmetic.This would make especiallygood workin most of the company's senseif ordinary literacy, jobs does not reallyrequire as schoolsdefine it. For those social sciences that take a societal and cultural perspectiveon the concernaboutthe relations of human social life, a most fundamental organization between literacyand schooling is to question whetherfosteringliteracyis in fact the central activity of public schooling as an institution of mass society. The to the school's other activitiesmay play equally importantroles, in contradiction role of the school in fosteringliteracy.These otheractivitiesincludesocial sorting, as items of cultural the maintenanceof prestigeof the "high"formsof letteredness off the labor and for care child people keeping young parents, working capital, market. The variousactivitiesof schools are organizedso that class position is in most instancesmaintainedfrom one generationto the next. One need not assumethat school personnel do this deliberately.Yet survey data on school achievement consistentlypresentus with an unavoidablesocial fact:Only in a minorityof cases does the modern public school function for individualsor for society as Horace Mann envisioned that it would, as the "balancewheel of democracy."The issue can be investigatedwithout deciding in advancewhetherone or anotherkind of activity (function) is predominant.A useful question is, "How do the various activitiesof schools work together-how are they organizedin relationship-for In short, the relations studentsof varyingclass, racial,and ethnic backgrounds?" betweenthe manifestcurriculumof school subjectmatter-literacy and numeracy in the narrowsense-and the hiddencurriculumof social sortingand rankingare 527

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FREDERICK ERICKSON an issue of central interest for the social sciences, as well as for educatorsand citizens. Variation in Literacies and Intelligences Cognitive Abilities as Domain-Specific Recent work in cognitive anthropologyand in cross-cultural psychologyhas investigatedcomplex thought processesamong nonliteratepeoples as a topic of interestin its own rightand as a baselinefor comparisonwith the thoughtprocesses of literatepeople. It appearsfrom this work that, contraryto an earlierview in anthropologyand in lay opinion, nonliteratepeople are capable of systematic the thinkingthat involves abstraction.Gladwin(1970), for example, investigated reasoningthat is involved in Polynesiannavigation.Sailorsfrom these islandsare able to travelfrom one small atoll to anotheracrosshundredsof miles of open sea and arrive at their exact destination. They navigate using the stars and other orientationcues, but make use of the stars in ways very differentfrom Western navigationalreasoning.Their navigationsystem is thoroughlysystematic,but its basic principlesand categoriesdifferfundamentally from the postulatesand principles that form the foundationfor Westernnavigation.The Polynesiansystem is to neophyteswithoutusing writing. taughtby older navigators Polynesiantraditional navigationis an especiallyapt test case for the proposition that nonliteratethinkingcan be highlyregularand abstract,since sailingprovides a crucialtest of the adequacyof the system of reasoningand of its teaching;if the systemis flawed,or if the neophytedidn't learn it correctly,the boat and its crew are lost at sea. Interestingly, however,when given Westerntests of mental ability, Gladwin'snavigatorsscored very low. On the tests they seemed to lack the kinds of cognitiveabilitiesthey wereable to demonstrate on the open sea. Childsand Greenfield(1980) have done a seriesof investigations of the thinking underlyingtraditionalweaving in Chiapas,Mexico, and of the ways that experienced weaversteach inexperiencedones. Lave (1977) has studied the arithmetic thinking of apprenticetailors in Liberia. Again, the weavers and tailors when workingwith threadand cloth can be seen to be capableof measurement operations and other kinds of reasoningthat they are unableto displaywhen given Western school-likeintelligenceand achievementtests. In these and similar studies, people's abilitiesto reason appearto be domainacrosstask domains that differ in surfaceform. specific ratherthan generalizable This is a fundamental point. Literacy and Schooling as Task Domains A numberof theoristshave arguedthat even thoughnonliterate thinkingcan be shown to be systematic,there is still a qualitativedifferencebetweenthe thinking of nonliterateand literatepeople. Literacy,these scholarsargue, enables one to occursin escapethe limitationsplacedon cognitionby spokendiscourse.Speaking real time, with an immediacyof presencebetweenuttererand utterance.Written discoursesteps outside real time. Once the writerhas inscribeda text the writeris ableto step backfromit and take a distanced,criticalview of its content.Reflective thinkingand self-critical analysisis enabledby this, it is argued,by scholarssuch as Ong (1977), Goody (1977), Luria(1959), and Olson (1977). Scribnerand Cole (1981, p. 4) characterize these assertionsas "GreatDivide" theories.They maintainthat to proposea vast qualitativegulf betweenliterateand 528

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

nonliteratereasoningis to repeatthe more generalpresumptionin cognitiveand developmentalpsychology(e.g., both in classicallearningtheory and in Piagetian developmentaltheory) that reasoningabilities, once acquired, are relatively or absolutelycontext independent.Recent work by Cole and others is beginningto show us, in contrastto the conventionalview of mentalabilitiesas essentially fixed, that reasoning,literacy,and numeracyoperationsappearto be much more labile than was previouslythought.Human reasoningseems to consist of skills that are reflexivelyconstitutedin the context of situation of use and purpose.This is a and situation-specific conceptionof thinkingas sets of domain-specific operations ratherthan sets of generalabilities. and Cole (1981) speakof these cognitiveoperationsas practices: Scribner sequenceof activitiesusing By a practicewe mean a recurrent, goal-directed a particulartechnology and particularsystems of knowledge.We use the term "skills" to referto the coordinatedsets of actions involvedin applying this knowledge in particularsettings. A practice, then, consists of three components:technology,knowledge,and skills .... Literacyis not simply scriptbut applyingthis knowledge learninghow to readand writea particular for specificpurposesin specificcontextsof use. (p. 236) Literacy,too, is seen as a practice: scriptbut Literacyis not simply learninghow to readand write a particular applyingthis knowledgefor specificpurposesin specificcontextsof use. (p. 236) or the abilityto navigate,or to run a microcomputer, By extension,"numeracy," or any other domain of knowledgeand skill is seen as not just cognitiveoperation in isolation but as cognitive operation employing a specific technology toward then, are radicallyconstitutedby their contexts of specific ends. All "literacies," use. This is not the opposite of context independence, that is, it is not context or field dependence. differentnotion of Rather,it is a fundamentally dependence the relations between an individual's intellectual capabilitiesand the specific materialand social situations in which those capabilitiesare employed. To call thesecapabilities practicesis to saythatan individual's abilityto thinkis dialogically defined, that is, constituted by (a) other people in particularforms of social relationship, (b) the physicalobjects(utensils,tools) and symbols(words,numbers) with which the individualinteracts,directlyor vicariously,in doing the thinking. Changethe physicalform of the tools or symbols, or change the social forms of relationsamong the people with whom the individualis learningthe practice(or is performingit once learned)and one has profoundlychanged the nature of the interaction-the natureof the learningtask. In doing so one has also changedwhat in ordinaryparlancewe call the abilityof the individual. that a child can displayarithmetic From this point of view, it is not surprising competencewhile dealing with change at the grocerystore and yet seem to lack when doing what seems to be the "same"arithmeticproblemon that performance a worksheetor at the blackboardin the classroom, even if the problem were displayedusing picturesof coins with which the child is familiarratherthan using numeralswith which the child might be less familiar.Still, a pictureof a coin is not a coin, and relationswith the teacherand fellow studentsare not the same as 529

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FREDERICK ERICKSON relationswith a storeclerk(when one has money) and one's little brotheror friend carriesno negativesocial performance (beforewhom one's displayof appropriate and emotional consequences).The nature of the task in the store and in the and so is the natureof the abilitiesrequired to accomplish classroomis verydifferent it. Cursory reading in the current debates about excellence in education (e.g., National Commission on Excellence, 1983) and in standardtextbooksin educateachereducation(e.g., Biehler,1974, pp. tional psychologyused in undergraduate 460-480, 571-576, 605-615; Good & Brophy, 1980, p. 487; Vander Zanden & Pace, 1984,pp. 99-120) showsthatthe unexamined presuppositions-the culturally learned ontological postulates-about the nature of individual ability that are currentin policy decisionmaking and in teachereducationare very differentfrom the viewjust presented.This new view turnsthe notion of individualabilityinside out by seeing it as socially constitutedratherthan as context independentand located inside the individual alone. This is so fundamentala critique of the conventional wisdom of educationalpracticein the United States that it bears furtherdiscussion. We can ask what the evidencebase is for the new perspective on ability,and on the natureof variousliteracies,broadlyconstrued.The majorstudy is that already cited: Scribnerand Cole, 1981. In a set of relatedinvestigationsthey compared who wereliteratein Westernscript,in Arabicscript, patternsof Liberians reasoning in a traditionalLiberianscript,with the reasoningpatternsof Liberianswho were nonliterate.Evidencefor a subject'sreasoningpatternswas derivedfrom analysis of that subject'sbehavioron standardtests and on speciallydesignedtests. Data collection in some of the substudiesincludedclose observationand interviewing, so that those sourcesof informationabout the subject'sreasoningprocesseswere availablein additionto the evidenceof the outcomes of those processesthat could be inferredfrom the content of the choicesthe subjectmade in completingthe test items. and Cole werealso able to conducta crucialcomparisonthat had never Scribner been made before: that between literates and nonliterates,controlling for the influence of schooling independentof the influence of literacyitself on thought processes.This comparisonwas possible because of the traditionalscript found among the Vai, a Liberiantribalgroup. The Vai scriptis taught outside schools and is used for purposessuch as letterwritingand keepingfarminglistsand records. Vai script is not used in written interactionwith Western or Muslim-schooled thatis, it is not usedin interethnic commerceor in fillingout governmental literates; forms. Becauseamong the Vai there were both unschooledand schooled persons who were literate in Vai script, Scribnerand Cole were able to compare the performanceof the two subgroupsof Vai literatesto see what effects schooling itself might have on the capacityof the Vai literatesto demonstratehigherorder cognitiveskills in test situations.Scribnerand Cole were also able to compareVai literates and nonliterates, both sets of subjectsnot havingattendedeithera Western school (Britishsystem)or a Muslim school. European-derived The naturaloccurrence of these comparisongroupsin Liberiagave Scribner and Cole a naturalexperimental situationin which they could ask whetherliteracyper se influencedpeopleto use so-called"higher order" thinking,or whetherit appeared that those ways of thinking and the capacity to display them in Westerntest situationswas a consequenceof the experienceof schoolingratherthan of literacy alone. This is a key issue in the debate over the "GreatDivide" theories of the 530

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE influence of literacy on thought. Proponentsof the Great Divide theories have use of problemarguedthat literacyenablesgreaterabstraction,decontextualized logicalreasoning,and otheraspectsof whatpsychomesolvingskills,Western-style tricians consider to be higher order thinking. Opponents of the Great Divide theorieshave arguedthat the capacityof literatepeopleto displaysuch skillsin test situationsis due not to the influenceof literacyso much as it is to the influenceof schooling. Students in school, it is argued, learn the point of test-like problem situations.They learnhow to see in test items what the testerdesignedthe item to test. Nonliteratepeople who are also nonschooleddo not learn how to "read" the test items the way schooled people have learned to do. The ability to perform in school-likereasoning tasks,then, is seen not as evidenceof inherent appropriately (culture-free) cognitiveabilitybut as evidenceof culture-specific learning.By going to school, childrenlearnthe culturalprinciplesfor actingin school-likeways when playing school-like reasoninggames. Nonschooled (and nonliterate)people may possessthe same reasoningabilitiesas do those who have been schooled;it is just to be able to that the nonschooleddo not possessthe culturalknowledgenecessary test the that the items school-like present. reasoninggames play Scribnerand Cole's results(1981, pp. 242ff) suggestthat schoolingby itself had much more influence on the capacity of the Vai to display ability with certain at English thoughtprocessesthan did literacyby itself.Moreover,while attendance school did seem to influence student'sthinking,that patternof influencewas not so absolute,as conventionalwisdom would expect. The nearlyso thoroughgoing, Vai faroutperformed theirnonschooled kindsof tasksat whichthe English-schooled fellows were tasks that entailed deliberatecomment on the procedures that were rules,of rules beingdone: explanationsof sortingpatterns,of logic, of grammatical of games. Schooling showed some influence on some other tasks: story recall, recallof lists of objects,logic problems.But on other tasks schooling abstraction, showed no apparentinfluence:flexibilityin sorting(numberof dimensionsused), word definitions, incremental recall. Urban experience, rather than schooling, and the for groupingobjectsby classmembership seemedto influencea preference use of taxonomic clusteringin free recall. These last findings,the authors note (1981, p. 243), run contraryto those from most other studies,as does the finding that urbanexperienceratherthan schoolinginfluencedthe subjects'performance would attributeto schooling. in directionsthat otherresearchers influencethan literacy to have stronger In short,even schooling,whichappeared over subjects'ways of thinking, did not seem to stimulatewhat could be called set of overallcognitivecompetence.Rather,school seemedto stimulatea narrower abilities:the abilities involved in knowing how to comment to an observerand presumablyto one's self, on what one has been doing in a task situationwhose for problemsolutionarepredetermined, areclosed,in whichalgorithms parameters itself. as partof the task structure schoolThe work of Scribnerand Cole warnsus againstthe fallacyof regarding like learningtasks as requiringgreatercapacityfor higherorderthinkingthan do everydaytasks in home, community, and work settings.Schools may foster student's abilitiesto recognizecanonicalforms of task solution and to communicate their insight about how to do such tasks in canonical forms of speaking,writing, and calculatingwith numbers. This point was underscoredin the presidential deliveredby RichardAndersonat the 1984annualmeetingof the American address EducationalResearch Association. In that talk Anderson identified featuresof lower orderthinking in early gradesreadinginstructionand achievementtesting 531

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ERICKSON FREDERICK

that mitigateagainstacquisitionof more complex readingskillsin the latergrades. Lowerorderthinkingand the abilityto apply algorithmsuncritically is what early gradesachievementtests measure. Schools appearto be quite good at teaching more broadly those situation-specific canonicalpractices.But that is not reasoning, and more fundamentally construed. Anotherfallacythis line of workwarnsus againstis that of interpreting culturally as evidenceof the presenceor uncritically, patternedcommunicativeperformance absenceof underlyingcognitivecompetence(see the discussionin Cole & Bruner, 1971). An example of this is the fallacy of attributingmetacognitiveability to studentswho have learnedto talk in school-likeways about the reasonsfor their choices in experimentaltasks and attributinglack of metacognitiveability to studentswho do not talk in school-likeways.This fallacycan be found in the work communiof currentPiagetians (e.g., Flavell, 1977) and the studentsof referential tasks(e.g., Asher, 1976;Glucksberg, cation in laboratory Krauss,& Higgins, 1975; Markman, 1979). Sociolinguisticresearchon the cognitive complexity of Black waysof speakingthat on firstglance English,for example,showsthat nonstandard may seem to indicate lower order thinking, especially the lack of capacity for and logical reasoning,are in fact ways of speakingthat convey higher abstraction order thinking (see especially Erickson, 1984; Labov, 1972). The problem of cognitive competence-the ability to recognizeand use higher order thinkingthan in the mouth and may lie more in the eye or ear and brainof the interpreter brainof the speakerof a culturallynonstandard way of speaking.This is a problem of ethnocentricbias in the study of relationsbetween languageand thought, a problemof which much educationalresearchon students'reasoningseems to be unaware. Learning Tasks as Social Environments and Cole's findingsand Cole'searlierwork(Cole,Gay, Glick, & Sharp, Scribner and situation-specific natureof learningtasks 1971) emphasizethe culture-specific inside and outside school. Their work emphasizesas well the importanceof the This surface physicalform of the objectsor symbolsby whichthe task is presented. form providescues to the schooledtest subjectabout what responsesto make and about what to comment on when explainingone's reasoning.Scribnerand Cole's findingsalso point to the importanceof anotherdimension of the learningtask: that of social relationsbetween the tester and the tested, or the teacherand the student.This is the othertaskdimensionthat was mentionedearlierin the example of makingchangeat the grocerystore. Recent researchon everydaythinkingsheds furtherlight on the importanceof the dimension of social relationsin learningtasks that ordinarilywe think of as and abstractedfrom social context. Lave, Murtaugh,and exclusively"cognitive" de la Rocha(1984) havebeen investigating arithmetic of Americanadults reasoning while shoppingin the supermarket. They find that the adults,from a wide rangeof are ableto make pricecomparisons that arevirtuallyerrorschoolingbackgrounds, free when shopping.Given the same kinds of choice problemsin a test situation, however,all their subjects made many errors.The more highly schooled made fewererrorsthan the less schooled,but all subjectsmade more errorsof choice in the test than in the store. Does this suggestseriousflaws in schooled Americans' Far from it, in the authors'interpretation. capacitiesfor abstractreasoning? Lave et al. (1984) see the crucialdifferencebetweenthe shoppingtask and the test task as lying not on the dimension of abstraction-concreteness but on the 532

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE dimension of problem-definition by self or by other. This is a matter of social relations. In the grocery store price comparison occurs near the end of a long sequence of choice points that involve many factors besides price, for example, the size and shape of one's shelf space, taste preferences of family members, menu plans for the week. The nature of the price comparison problem-its definition, its relevance to the ultimate decision to buy-is in the hands of the shopper. Shoppers are very good at shaping the problems-the points of quantitative comparison-in ways that they can solve. In the test situation, however, the problem's quantitative parameters are established by the tester. According to Lave et al. it is not just that such a problem is "out of context"; it is that it is in a context in which the power relations are such that the subject has no influence on problem formulation. The right to be proactive in shaping the cognitive task at hand appears to be important in reading as well as in arithmetic. In a participant observational study of reading practices of employees in a milk plant, for example, Scribner (1984) and Jacob (in press) found that workers who tested as very limited in reading ability developed effective means of reading work orders. They used noncanonical ways of redefining the reading tasks so that they could accomplish them successfully. If the workers had been forced to use canonical, school-like ways of deciphering written text they would have been unable to do their job in the plant, because they had not mastered the canonical form of the practice of reading. This is not to say that their noncanonical reading practices were less reasonable than those taught by schools. The workers' practices were reasonable-just according to a different system of reasons. Since the social organization of their work entailed the right to read the way they knew how, they were able to display competence that otherwise would not have been displayed. Recent work by Rogoff and Gardner (1984) sheds further light on the issue of social relations as inherent in the constitution of learning tasks. They have been studying mothers teaching classification tasks to children in everyday teaching situations. One such task is arranging items purchased at the grocery store. Mothers and children were observed doing this task in a laboratory kitchen. The kind of instruction provided by the mothers is what Wertsch (1979) has characterized as proleptic instruction; the novice carries out simple aspects of a task under the guidance of an expert, who can demonstrate performance to the novice. The balance between observation and guided trial attempts on the part of the learner is established by mutual negotiation-learner seeking help and teacher providing it. This negotiation establishes the fluid, interactional system of social and cognitive support that Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) call scaffolding. The scaffolding is a matter of social relations as well as of subject matter content. In the everyday teaching scenes that Rogoff and Gardner have been observing, the scaffolding relationship between teacher and learner is jointly constructed. The child has rights to ask for a range of kinds of help. Like the grocery shopper, the child and the teacher have rights to redefine the task as part of the scaffolding negotiation. This social form of learning environment in everyday teaching situations is very different from that found in school learning environments. There, typically, the learner has much less right to help shape the task. In such a situation it may be that very often the teacher's one-sided attempts to construct a scaffold that reaches the learner don't work. The scaffold doesn't reach. With the influence of various performance accountability systems, schools are increasingly places in which one individual (the teacher) sets absolute task parameters for others. Practice in such situations of performance no doubt improves 533

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ERICKSON FREDERICK

on standardized tests. It does not improve overallreasoning studentperformance characterof reasoningas sets of ability,if Cole is rightabout the domain-specific practices.Moreover,school-liketask constructionmay do violence to civility, in the sense of a social contractthat involvesassentby the learner. In the most extremeforms of school learningenvironments,not only does the learnerhave no rightsto shapethe learningtask, but neitherdoes the teacher.The test is the most extremeexampleof this. In observingexperienced teachersadminI have standardized tests been their frustration at impressedby istering repeatedly not beingableto explainsimpleconfusionstheirstudentsmay haveaboutparticular items. The test as a social situationhas removedthe teacher'srightto scaffold-to teach.Repeatedly teacherswill attemptto breakthroughthis, not to cheaton behalf of the student, but to prevent the child from making what for that child is a nonvalid wrong answer-the child's reasoningis on the right track, it's just that the child is havingtrouble"reading" the task cues of the item. Childrenrepeatedly seek such help. Again, it seems not simply to cheat but to do with the problem what they would do in ordinaryproblemsolving at the groceryor in an everyday is jointly constructed so that it fits both the teachingsituation,in which scaffolding task and the learnerattemptingthe task;so that in Vygotsky's terms it bridgesthe zone of proximal development(Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 84-91). Mehan (1973) has shown how professional test administrators and childrenjointly negotiateanswers in individualtest situations.This press toward scaffoldingwork by both teacher and studentseems ubiquitous. Anotherinstanceof a teachingsituationin which the social rules preventboth teacherand studentfromscaffolding lesson.The teacher's negotiationis the scripted manual accompanyingthe basal readingbook scriptsthe lesson partially.Some special remedialinstructionfor low performingstudentsis entirely scripted,for example,the DISTARcurriculum developedfor earlygradesstudentsfromimpoverishedfamilies,often of racialor linguisticminoritybackground. In these lessons the teacher'squestions, and the student's choral responses,are mandatedby a the content script.Neitherthe teachernor the studenthas the rightto reformulate of the questions and answers,or to reformulatethe sequence in which they are routines(loud voice, hyperasked, or the behavioralstyle of the question-answer correctpronunciation). If social relations are an inherent dimension of learning tasks, and if the of rightsand obligationsbetweenteacherand learnerdoes not include relationship the rightof both partiesto engagein mutualscaffolding we must ask construction, what opportunities such school learningenvironmentscould provideas situations for the acquisition of reasoningskills. In addition, we must ask whether such environmentscan possibly be arenas for the enactment of civility, or whether civility-mutual commitment to participationin society, beyond the self-is impossible in such circumstances.It would seem that such environments are inimical to civility and that student disruption and resistanceto learning and teacherfrustration and "burnout" are reasonable responsesto a workenvironment controlledby externalinfluences. that is unreasonably Ways of Speaking and Teacher-Student Interaction Perspectives From Sociolinguistic Research We have identifieda factorthat may limit students'acquisitionof literacyand reasoningskillsand that may vitiatecivilityin the school. This factoris not a fault 534

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

of individualchildrenor teachers.It is an aspectof socialorganization in schoolsconstraintson learnerchoice in task definitionand on the abilityof teachersand studentsto constructcognitivescaffolding togetheras they work on learningtasks. Some constraints come fromoutsidethe classroom: fromadministrative regulations and fromthe designers and standardoperatingprocedures of curriculum materials. Other constraintscome from within the room: from teachers'(and children's) culturallylearnedassumptionsabout the properconduct of school teachingand learning. Anotherfactorhas been identifiedby recentsociolinguistic research as a significant source of frictionin classroomsand as an influencetowardmisjudgmentof student performanceand motivation by teachers.That factor is the attributions that are made about otherson the basis of the languageform they use in speaking. an interdisciplinary Interestin this issue has been centralin sociolinguistics, field that links anthropology, sociology,socialpsychology,and linguistics.Sociolinguists have been concernedwith what happens in social interactionand in perception when one or more personsuse culturallypatternedways of speakingthat do not matchthe culturalexpectationsof the otherswith whom they are interacting. This in Americanclassroomsin studiesof culturaldifference issue has been investigated and culturalsimilaritybetweenteachersand the studentsthey teach. Michaels and Collins (1984), for example, found that when working class accountsin earlygradesclassroomdiscusAmericanblack childrentold narrative took differedfrom the culturallystandardnarrative sion the form the narratives form used by middle class white childrenand white teachers.The standardform with an initial framingstatementof the "point"to be resembledwrittennarrative, made by the anecdote, followed by the story itself, which was thus framedas an instanceof the moregeneralpoint thatwas made.Withinthe narrative, key features and with of informationwere highlightedin culture-specific ways, grammatically voice tone. When the working class black children told narrativesthey used culturally nonstandardnarrativestructureand nonstandardgrammaticaland intonational ways of markingemphasisat key points in the story. As they told stories in this by the teachers.Close analysisof transcripts way they werecontinuallyinterrupted the blackchildren's of the classroomdialoguerevealedthat the teachersinterrupted at those pointsat whichthe speechformdifferedfromthe culturally storiesprecisely in ways similarto writtennarration. The mainstream form of doing oral narration at which nothing teacherskept tryingto repairpoints in the children'snarratives, had gone wrong,accordingto the culturalconventionsof workingclassblack oral the children'stalk did not know how to "read" discourse.The teachersapparently and coherent.This led to inappropriate as intelligible attemptsat scaffolding by the confused inarticulate. child as saw the narrator who and/or teacher, apparently The result repeatedlywas frustrationon the part of both teacher and child. A number of other researchershave found similar patterns of apparent cultural due to differencesin ways of speakingand listening(e.g., DeStefano, interference & Pepinsky, Sanders, 1982; Eder, 1982; Erickson, 1979; see also the volume of relativelyearlywork along these lines;Cazden,Hymes, & John, 1972). Languageform and discoursepatternsare not the only aspectsof speakingand differences of studentsby teachers. Cultural listeningthat can lead to misperception in conversationalturn-takingcan also be a in assumptions of appropriateness that leads to troublein the classroom.Gomes (1979), for sourceof misperception teachermisdiagnoseda Cape Verdeanchild example, reportsthat a kindergarten 535

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ERICKSON FREDERICK

as potentiallyemotionallydisturbedafter3 weeksof school, partlyon the grounds her and other children.Behavthat the child had been continually"interrupting" other turns at speakinghad before had been child the persons' speaking iorally, been completed. That was what people did in the child's home. The teacher the child's culture-specific way of speakingas evidence of the child's interpreted emotional state. From the teacher'spoint of view that judgment made perfect sense. It was based, nonetheless,on misperceptionof the meaning of the child's actions,from the child'sculturalpoint of view. This line of work might seem to be claiminga simple, culturaldeterministview conflict and of academicfailureby culturalminoritychildren. of teacher-student That is not the case. Culturaldifferenceseems not only to be a source of conflict it can also be seen as a resultof conflict. Social psychologists in social interaction; (e.g., Giles & Powesland, 1975) have found that in situationsof experimentally induced conflict and negativeaffect, individualswho speak differentdialectswill more broad forms of that dialect as interactionproceedsand speak progressively data tracea processof increaseddifferentiaconflictescalates.These experimental tion-what Bateson(1972, pp. 61-72) calls schismogenesis-across a short space of time. In a naturalistic study, Labov(1963-1972) has found a similarphenomenon occurringover a longerterm. He finds that over a 20-yearperiod,featuresof the dialect spoken by natives of Martha'sVineyard have become increasingly differentfrom the standard Englishspokenby uppermiddleclasssummertourists. Labov interpretsthis as an instance of culture change as a symbol of political conflict.The islandersare dependenton the in a situationof intergroup resistance touristsas a sourceof income, but resentthe situationof dependence,and manifest that by speakingin ways that are becomingmore and more distinctfrom those of the tourists. In an earlygradesclassroomstudy,Piestrup(1973) found a similarphenomenon interactionacross a single school year. Workingin occurringin teacher-student schools, she audiotapedclassroomdialoguebetweenworking recentlydesegregated class black students and their teachers.Some of the teacherswere white; others were black. If over the course of the year the teacher reacted negativelyto the child's nonstandardspeech and continually attemptedto get the child to speak the dialect featuresin the child's speech became broaderas the more "correctly," If the teacherdid not react negativelyto the child'sspeech at the year progressed. beginningof the year, by the end of the year the dialect featuresin the child's speechhad becomeless marked.The childwasspeakingmorelike standard English, as a resultof learningthroughthe modelingof the teacherand the upper apparently middleclasswhite childrenin the room. This patternheld whetherthe teacherwas white or black. It seems that what Piestrupfound was a processof culturalschismogenesis, or of culturaldifferencein the its absence,dependingon the situationof micropolitics classroom. When the teacher made the child's ways of speakinga grounds for more different conflict, the childjoined in the conflict by becomingprogressively in such a situationof conflict from the teacherin interactional style. Apparently, the child was refusingto learnfrom the modelingthatwas presentin the scene and was also refusingto learnfrom directinstructionby the teacher.When the teacher did not make culture differencea ground for conflict, the child adaptedin the directionof the normativestyle. The classroomsPiestrupdescribedcan be seen as representing differentcivility conditions. In the former classrooms the children resisted commitment to a 536

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

normative order and manifestedthat linguistically.In the latter classroomsthe childrenmanifestedcommitment to the normativeorder.Those were classrooms in which the teacherdid not attemptto coercecommitment. Cultural contact difference, then, seemsto be entailedin the politicsof intergroup of interaction in face-to-face and in the micropolitics encounters.In some situations culture differencecan interferewith people's ability to work together. In other with successfulcooperation, situationsculturedifferencedoes not seem to interfere even though the interactional partnersmay have to work a bit harderat it than if they were not culturallydifferent. Piestrup's intriguingfindingsfrom classroomsare borneout in the experimental researchof Giles and Powesland(1975) and in the naturalistic work reportedin Ericksonand Shultz(1982). In these studiesof two-personconversations, cultural differencewaxed and waned in its salience,dependingon the micropoliticsof the situation. Moreover, as cultural style difference became more marked, greater and this covariedwith negativepersonperception. interactional difficultyoccurred, It would seem that culturedifferenceplays a dual role in interactional trouble. Culture differenceitself can lead to interactionaltrouble (lack of intelligibility, which then may or may not become groundsfor conflictthat misunderstanding), sustains and escalates.If the conflict is not sustained, even major interactional difficultiesdue to culture differencecan be sidestepped,and cooperationcan be maintained.However,if the conflictis sustained,the conflictitselfapparently feeds On the other back on the culturaldifference,beginninga cycle of schismogenesis. in hand, in a situationin which conflictsexist at the outset, very small differences cultural style (e.g., dialect, dress), which on the face of it should not prevent cooperation,can be used in interactionas resourcesfor conflict. In other words, when people consciously or unconsciouslygo looking for trouble in interaction, they can find reasonsfor conflictin culturaldifference. thus suggeststhat culturaldifferencein ways of speaking research Sociolinguistic and listeningis an importantfactorin the acquisitionof literacyand reasoningin schoolsand in the creationand maintenanceof conditionsof civilityin the school social system. Culturaldifferencedoes not simply cause conflict betweenteachers and students-interactional trouble that inhibits student learning. But cultural differencecan contributeto alreadyexisting groundsfor conflict. It can lead to thatundersome conditionscan developinto sustainedbattles, momentarystruggles and under other conditions can not only not make for furthertrouble,but can serveas a positiveresourcein teaching. Literacy and the Politics of Social Identity: Achieving School Failure In reviewingthe possible roles of culturedifferencein classroomteachingand of face-to-face interaction.Socialtheoryof learningwe discussedthe micropolitics on the Americanpattern macropolitical processesprovidesyet anotherperspective of low school achievementin the use of canonicalliteracyand reasoningpractices by childrenof workingclass and minoritybackground. Resistancetheory explains the puzzlinglylow school performanceof students of practicalreasoningin everydaylife display impressive who in the "literacies" competence. Resistancetheory is a subset of reproductiontheory, a criticalperclassdistinctionsfromone spectiveon the role of schoolsin societyas perpetuating generationto the next. Bourdieuand Passeron(1977), for example, argue that definitionof public school learningtasks in the normativeterms of uppermiddle 537

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FREDERICKERICKSON

class and upperclass elite culturalknowledge(writtenliteracyas essay-likeprose, logicalrigor)servesto put studentsof non-elitefamily reasoningas academic-like a at when competingwith elite students.Elite cultural background disadvantage from generationto generknowledgeand elite social standingare thus reproduced ation by the unfairadvantagethat elite studentsbringto school:the possessionof culturalcapital. Resistancetheory points out that non-elite studentscooperatein this situation themselves still furtherby refusingto of unfair competition by disadvantaging learn. Failureto learn simple tasks of literacyand numeracy,from this point of view, is seen not as evidence of innate disabilityin the student, but as political resistance.In self-defeating attemptsto fightback the studentresistsbeing defined by the school as a personof less worththan others.The child'sdefianceprovidesa more acceptable self-image than does agreement with the school's definition. is unsuccessful Whether covertor overt,wittingor unwitting,this resistance because it can be redefinedby the school systemeitheras evidenceof stupidityand/or low motivationin the learneror as evidenceof culpablerecalcitrance-the markof the sinnerwho deservesseverepunishment. unrepentent Reproductiontheory and its constituent,resistancetheory, view as a sham the ostensiblybenign ideologyof equalityof educationalopportunity,with the school as a rational,formal organizationwhose manifestaims are to deliver its services under conditions of maximum fairness.On the contrary,it is argued,the school sets up the non-elitechild for failureby defininglearningtasksin the way it does. The argumentof reproductiontheory is persuasivebut flawed. Reproduction that childrenwho show abilitiesoutside theoryexplainsthe seemingcontradiction school that they don't inside school must not simply be stupid or lazy. But the relationsof cause argumentis a bit too pat. It presumesmechanistic,"top-down" and effectbetweenthe macrosocialorder-social classesand theirinherentconflict, institutionsand their inherentcontradictions betweenmanifestand latent aimsand the micro social orderof face-to-facerelationsin classrooms.It is an overdeterminedsocial theorythat denies any autonomousrealityto social life and choice at the level of everydayconduct of life-in this case, the level of everydaylife in classrooms.Ostensiblybelongingto the streamof neo-Marxistcriticaltheory, an overdrawn of vulgarMarxism.It denies reproduction theoryhas all the weaknesses any realityto social and cognitive choice at the level of the individual.We have in cognitiveanthroseen empiricalevidenceof such choice in the currentresearch that has been reviewedhere, pology,cross-cultural psychology,and sociolinguistics and we have seen the importance of such choice makingby learners and by teachers in the interactionalconstructionof learningenvironmentsthat foster or inhibit studentlearning. Resistancetheory lacks some of the flaws of its parent,reproduction theory. It grantsrealityto social organizationat the level of face-to-facerelationsand thus of reproduction avoidsthe reductionism theory.In a sympathetic yet criticalreview, Giroux (1983) takes resistancetheory to task for fallacies of loose thinking, especiallyfor the fallacyof overgeneralization. Everyinstanceof studentmisbehavior-scrawled writingon an assignment, failureto completean assignment, fighting, as evidence of resistance.The taking drugs,absenteeism-cannot be interpreted analysisof resistanceas a phenomenonmust be morejudicious to be persuasive, Giroux argues. Still, resistancetheory is attractivebecause it can account for linkagesbetween macrosocialand microsocialprocesseswithout reducingeither level to the other. Resistancetheory,despiteits limitations,is powerfullyexplana538

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

and realisticallyfor the phenomenon of tory. It accounts more comprehensively massive school failure among the poor than does classical liberal social theory, whose naive view of schooling as an unmixed blessing for those deservingpoor who are willingto take advantage of the opportunities given them ignoresunpleasant facts of life in urban and ruralschools with predominantly low SES student populations.Resistancetheory,judiciouslyconstrued,also avoids the problemof crudedeterminismfound in reproduction theory. The point is not to assignblame for socialpathology,identifying eitherthe school and capitalistAmericaas victimizerof innocent youth or the low achievingchild as a defective incorrigiblewho deservesthe judgment of failure that he or she receives.What is neededis a valid analysisof the pathology; moreover,we need an analysisof presentconditionsof illnessthat mightpoint beyonditselfto conditions of health. Resistance theory provides part of what is needed on the way to discoveringsome answersby allowingus to look at what is happeningin schools a victimizer. withoutblaminga victim or castigating The view is at once pessimisticand affirming.It proposesthat childrenfailingin school are workingat achievingthat failure.The view does not wash its hands of the problem at that point. It maintains,however,that interventionto breakthe cycle of school failuremust startby locatingthe problemjointly in the processes of society at largeand in the interactionsof specificindividuals.It is the frontline deliverersof educational services and their clients, that is, teachers (and other staff)and students,who work togetherto achievethe school failure building-level to the studentalone by the conventionalwisdom of professional that is attributed educatorsand of the lay public. Studentalienationfrom learninghas been most obviousat the high school level, and a numberof studieshave documentedit. In an interesting case studythat was done before the advent of resistance theory, Cusick (1973) describedstudent school. He tracedthe dailyrounds alienationfromacademicworkin an urbanhiglh of smallsets of studentswho werefriends.Cusickshowsthe studentsas remarkably adept at avoidingacademiclearningacrossthe school day. They certainlyseemed to be workingactivelyat achievingschool failure. Student resistancehas been describedin high schools that differ considerably from the typical Americanones. Willis (1977) has written a reportof academic alienationamong Britishworkingclass high school youth. That study has become was done from the explicitperspective of resistance a modernclassic.His research theory,which has developedmainlythroughthe workof Britishscholarsin the socalled "new sociology of education"(see Young & Whitty, 1977). Scollon and in writtenliteracy Scollon(1981) examinethe issue of dramaticunderachievement and anthroa take The Scollons in areas. natives rural Alaskan sociolinguistic by come to see Alaskan native In their teenagers interpretation, perspective. pological the acquisitionof Westernwrittenliteracyas a kind of metaphoricadoptionof a new ethnic group identity. To become literate in school terms would be to disaffiliatesymbolicallyfrom their parents and other members of the Alaskan in traditional nativevillage,a few of whom are "literate" knowledgeand skill, such literatein schoolas that involved in hunting,and many of whom are marginally like practicesof literacy.Caughtin ambivalencebetweenmultipleculturalworlds, Alaskannativeyouth resistadoptingthe completesystemof school-defined literacy, and then sufferthe consequencesof marginalacquisition.They do not belongfully to the old ways or to the new. Resistanceas an explanationfor school failurehas been most obvious and has 539

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ERICKSON FREDERICK seemed most plausible when applied to high school students. This may be partly due to the nature of the comprehensive high school curriculum, with explicit tracking and various options for student choice within tracks-options that students can take that disadvantage them further by the absence of challenge in the courses chosen. Current attention to student resistance in high school may also be due to the salience of adolescent acting out and authority testing, which is seen as part of a natural developmental process: identity formation on the way to adulthood. Relatively little emphasis has been placed on resistance as an explanation for academic difficulties of children in the early grades. Children at that age, it is assumed, are not needing to distance themselves from adults the way teenagers do. Indeed, child development theory would suggest that the early grades student identifies with the teacher as a parent surrogate. One notable exception to the lack of studies of student resistance at the grade school level is the work of McDermott (1974, 1977). In detailed microanalysis of videotapes of instruction in reading groups, McDermott shows ways in which students in the "bottom" reading group work actively at not reading. The teacher, apparently unwittingly, cooperates with this. The analysis shows how, in the interactional tug of war that happens daily in the bottom reading group, the children in that group get much less reading instruction than do the children in the top group. But the children themselves help create that situation. It is not simply a matter of ethnic or racial bias on the teacher's part; the students are refusing to learn simple cognitive skills apparently as a form of micropolitical resistance. This line of empirical and theoretical work suggests that we need to move beyond simple, single-factor explanations of school failure in literacy and reasoning and in the breakdown of the social contract of civility in schools. Explanations that locate the source of the problem in genetic deficits in learners, or in cultural deprivation, or even in cultural difference by itself, all seem inadequate. Reproduction theory, at least that which is crudely stated, also seems inadequate. We need theory and empirical work that accounts for and describes the macro- and micropolitical economy of the social and cultural organization of the teaching and learning of school literacy and reasoning practices. If we came to better understand the processes by which the unequal distribution of knowledge and skill in our society is produced (see Mehan, 1979) we would be doing more adequate social research. We would also be providing information on which to base policies that might transcend the partial attempts at amelioration of the recent past-efforts which were well intentioned but which in retrospect seem to have been misdirected. There seems at this point to be no quick fix, no single-factor amelioration for what appear to be mutually constituted sets of systemic problems across multiple levels of social structure. Two Modest Success Stories and Some Questions About Them It would be wrong to conclude with the previous paragraph. At best it ended on a bleak note. At worst, the previous discussion may have seemed to suggest that large-scale social change is the only way to better the educational chances of nonelite students. That may be true, but it is probably simplistic. In this final section we will consider two cases in which something less than societal transformation seemed to make a difference in the school performance of typically low-performing students. The cases involve changes in everyday practices at the levels of the school and classroom. While educational reform may well need to go beyond those levels, 540

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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE

it may be instructiveto considersome changesthat principalsand teacherscould make within the existingschool system. A Case ofAlaskan Native Children Barnhardt nativevillageschool (1982) reportsa studyof an AlaskanAthabaskan in which the studentsdid much betteracademicallythan did their typical native as indicatedby end of the year scoreson standardized villageschool counterparts, are the tests, which, in the presentmood of concern for educationalproductivity basic currencyof school administrators. (I do not mean to argue here for the but in this case and in the one validityof this ubiquitouscriterionof productivity, that follows,the test scoresdo show cleardifferences from the usual patternof low achievementby non-elite,culturalminoritystudents.) The villageschool had three classrooms,grades 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. Each of the threeteachersin the school was nativeAlaskan,and each was a lifelongresidentof the village. The curriculumwas in English.It was the standardcurriculummandatedby the state. Apparently,everythingin the school was culturallymainstreamexcept for the patternof social relationsthe teachersused in deliveringinstruction.The teachers used means of exercisingsocial controlthat were more indirectthan those usually employedby nonnativeteachers.These were patternsof indirection-ways of not puttingindividualchildrenon the spot-that have been identifiedamong various Native Americangroupsin studiesof child rearingand of home-schoolexperience (see especiallyErickson& Mohatt, 1982;Philips,1972, 1982).In short,the content of instructionwas standard,but the process of instructionwas nonstandardin subtle ways. School instructionwas congruentwith patternsof social relationship found in home and communitylife in the village. Indirectsocial controlby the teachersprovidedopportunities for the childrento make some choices that a more usual way of teaching might not have made available.Therewere opportunities to redefinelearningtasks,as well as opportunities for self-pacingand for practicein privateuntil masteryhad been achieved. These opportunitiesfor choice seem especiallysignificantin light of our previous discussion of psychologicalresearchon the importanceof a social relationship between teacherand student that allows each some leeway for negotiation-not too much, but not too little either.The leewayseems to have enabledthe teachers and studentsto work out a form of prolepticinstruction. In these classroomstaught by unusually effective Native American teachers, students were held accountable for doing standardacademic work. The social means by which they accomplished that workdifferedslightlyfrom organizational the standard means more usually found in American classrooms.That these differenceswere relativelysmall in amount does not mean that they were not significantin kind. Indeed,our earlierdiscussionof literacyactivitiesas practices emphasizedthe importanceof culture-specific patternsin the social relationships involvedin tasks.Accordingto that view, when one has changedslightlythe nature of the social relationship betweenteacherand learnerone has changedfundamentally the natureof the academictask. Culturalcongruencein school learningtask definitionis one explanationfor the highachievementof the studentsin the Alaskanschool.A competinginterpretation is that since the teacherswere lifelong membersof the small village community they had much greater legitimacy than non-native teachers. They could hold 541

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FREDERICKERICKSON

students accountablefor academic work under conditions of civility, given the legitimacyof their authority,from the point of view of the childrenand of their parents.Since I have alreadycriticizedculturaldeterministargumentsas inadeis plausible,it may well be that both quate,and since the competinginterpretation the culturalorganizationof instructionand the legitimacyof the instructorwere workingtogether.We still want from this case a clearernotion of what was going or legitimacyof the on. We want to know why fine tuning in social relationships, teacher,or both togethermight have influencedthe Native Americanstudentsto performso well in this particular villageschool. A Case of Hawaiian Native Children Au and Mason (1981) reporta study of culturallycongruentreadinginstruction that begins to resolve some of the questionsthat remain from the Alaskancase. Here the cultural factor that seemed to make a differencewas the turn-taking organizationof first grade readinggroup conversationsabout storiesin the basal reader. Workingclass Hawaiiannatives belong to a speech community in which it is who talk customaryto tell anecdotesand discussthem in small groupsof speakers while others are talking. Such simultaneous speaking is not seen as impolite and as evidenceof intereston the part but as comfortable interruption, engagement in the conversation.The ubiquityof this patternfor the social of the participants organizationof conversationalparticipationwas establishedby anthropological & Boggs, 1977).The name for such speechevents in fieldwork (see Watson-Gegeo the communityis talk story. Au and Mason (1981) reportthat when readingstorydiscussionwas conducted of talk story,childrenspoke characteristic with the overlapping patterns turn-taking more coherentlyand learnedmore than they did when the lessonswereconducted in a one-speaker-at-a-time pattern.The latterway of organizing groupconversation of school-likeways of speaking.The former way of organizing, is characteristic is characteristic of community-like speech. allowingmultiplespeakers, As in the Alaskancase, the teachersin Hawaiidevelopeda mixed culturalform. in the readinglesson was not nearlyso overlapping Conversation among speakers events in the community.But the teachersallowedchildren as it was in talk-story to move slightly in the direction of overlappingand co-narration.The teachers steeredthe discussionstrongly,and in doing so gave higherordercomprehension instruction.In exchangefor that capacityto control topic, it seems, the teachers were allowingstudentsto conversein ways that were familiarand comfortableto this trade-offas a "balanceof rights"between them. Au and Mason characterize It may be that this balanceof rightsprovidesthe social and followership. leadership leeway for teacher and students to construct proleptic,mutually organizational accommodatinginstruction,in which interactioncould proceed by a mutually was not set off by ratifiable social contract,and in consequencestudentresistance the teacher'sway of teaching. Au and Mason'sstudyis of specialsignificance becauseit combinednaturalistic observationand hypothesisgenerationwith experimentalhypothesistesting. The two treatment conditions (talk story-like,and non talk story-likeconversation patterns)were variedacrossa seriesof lessons in which the readingdifficultywas held constant. Tests administeredimmediatelyafter the lessons, as well as error analysisand other proximal indicatorsof children'sreadingachievementwithin 542

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PERSPECTIVE AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'S

the lessonsthemselves,showedthatthe Hawaiiannativechildrenclearlyreadbetter of lesson interactionwas culturally when the social organization congruent. of lesson interaction As in the Alaskancase, the social organization by itselfwas improvedliteracyacquiprobablynot the only factorinfluencingthe dramatically sition of the children. The readinginstructionreceived was only one part of a of curriculum and pedagogydevelopedby the Kamehameha specialprogram Early EducationProjectin Honolulu.It seems significant, however,thatwhen everything in the classroomstayedthe same except the patternof conversational turn-taking in the readinglesson, the readingachievementof the childrenwas clearlyhigher in instruction. than the culturallycongruentform of social organization We lack a of so is still not clear. this was theory pedagogythat accountsfor Why social cognition togetherwith cognition about what we usually think of as the on this point). academicsubjectmattercontent(see Erickson,1982,for elaboration It may be that culturallycongruentinstructionsimplifiesthe task environment.In the Hawaiiancase if familiarconversationpatternsare used and the child does not have to attend to those as well as to the content discussed,perhapsthe child is enabled to devote more attention to the content of readinginstructionthan the child could in a situation of unfamiliarconversationalrules. But we can argue plausiblyalong other lines. It may be that culturallycongruentinstructiondepoliticizes cultural difference in the classroom, and that such depoliticizationhas Such a situation relationship. importantpositiveinfluenceson the teacher-student in the classroommight preventthe emergenceof student resistanceand of interIn addition,macropolitical conflict may well bear on the culturalschizmogenesis. micropoliticsof classroomlife in ways whose specificswe do not yet understand. I have revieweda number of new ways of thinking about academic learning tasks. The work raisesmore questionsthan it answers.At this point we still don't bearstronglyon prolepticinstruction and know what aspectsof culturalpatterning tasks as culThe notions of practices, prolepsis, scaffolding, learning scaffolding. and the micropolitics of classroomlife are turallycongruentinstruction,resistance, all emergentnotions in developingtheories. To continue new work along these new lines seems to be a good way to proceed in orderto deepen our theoretical and practical understandingof schools as environments for learning literacy, reasoning,and civility. To conclude, human learningas well as human teachingneeds to be seen as a social transaction,a collective enterprise.Society, culture, teacher, and student in the definition and enactment of learning tasks. Much recent interpenetrate hastakenan individualistic on schooland teachereffectiveness research educational reformattemptsof the recent past view of learningand teaching.The curricular attemptedto changethe academiccontent of instructionwithoutinstitutionalizing the fundamentalchanges in social relationsbetween teachersand studentsthat for teachinghigherorder would enablethe kind of learningenvironmentnecessary cognition in schools. The currentpublic mood seems to be to constrainteacherstudentinteractionstill further,to try to improve performance by gettingtougher on teachersas well as on students. The lines of work reviewedhere argue for a differentapproachand for a differentdefinition of the problem. It may be that teachersneed more control over their ways of teaching, not less. For classroom would be a change teachersto have more authorityas well as more responsibility in the allocation of power-social change in schools as institutions and in the society that maintainsthose schools. From a socioculturalpoint of view, literacy, 543

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ERICKSON FREDERICK reasoning, and civility as daily school practices cannot be associated and reordered apart from the fabric of society in which those practices take place. References theirown and anotherperson'scommuniAsher,S. R. (1976). Children's abilityto appraise cation performance. Developmental Psychology,12, 24-32. factorsin learningto read:The balance Au, K. H., & Mason,J. (1981). Socialorganizational of rightshypothesis. 17(1), 115-152. ReadingResearchQuarterly, Barnhardt,C. (1982). Tuning-in:Athabaskanteachers and Athabaskanstudents. In R. Centerfor issues in Alaskaneducation Barnhardt (Vol. 2). Fairbanks: (Ed.),Cross-cultural Cross-Cultural Studies,Universityof Alaska. Bateson,G. (1972). Steps to an ecologyof mind. New York:BallantineBooks. Biehler,R. F. (1974). Psychology appliedto teaching.Boston:Houghton-Mifflin. In education,society and culture. Bourdieu,P., & Passeron,J. C. (1977). Reproduction: BeverlyHills, CA: Sage. Cazden,C., Hymes, D., & John, V. (1972). Functionsof languagein the classroom.New York:TeachersCollegePress. The case P. M. (1980). Informalmodesof learningand teaching: Childs,C. P., & Greenfield, of Zinacantecoweaving.In N. Warren(Ed.),Studiesin cross-cultural (Vol. 2). psychology London:AcademicPress. Cole, M., & Bruner,J. S. (1971). Culturaldifferencesand inferencesabout psychological AmericanPsychologist, 26, 867-876. processes. contextof learningand thinking. Cole, M., Gay, J., Glick,J., & Sharp,D. (1971). Thecultural New York:BasicBooks. Cusick,P. (1973). Inside high school.New York:Holt, Rinehartand Winston. DeStefano, J. S., Pepinsky, H. B., & Sanders,T. S. (1982). In L. C. Wilkinson (Ed.), in the classroom.New York:AcademicPress. Communicating in communicative Eder,D. (1982). Differences stylesacrossabilitygroups.In L. C. Wilkinson in the classroom.New York:AcademicPress. (Ed.), Communicating in interErickson,F. (1979). Talkingdown: Some culturalsourcesof miscommunication In A. Wolfgang communication. New York: racialinterviews. (Ed.),Researchin nonverbal AcademicPress. betweenacademic Erickson,F. (1982). Classroomdiscourseas improvisation: Relationships task structureand social participationstructurein lessons. In L. C. Wilkinson (Ed.), in the classroom.New York:AcademicPress. Communicating in a conversation F. (1984). Rhetoric,anecdote,and rhapsody: Coherence Erickson, strategies In D. Tannen(Ed.),Coherence in spokenand written among blackAmericanadolescents. discourse(pp. 81-154). Norwood,NJ: Ablex. in two of participation structure Erickson, F., & Mohatt,G. (1982). The culturalorganization classroomsof Indianstudents.In G. Spindler(Ed.), Doing the ethnography of schooling. New York:Holt, Rinehartand Winston. as gatekeeper: Social interaction in interviews. Erickson, F., & Shultz,J. (1982). Thecounselor New York:AcademicPress. Flavell,J. H. (1977). Cognitive Cliffs,NJ: Prentice-Hall. development. Englewood P. F. (1975). Speechstyle and social evaluation. London:Academic Giles, H., & Powesland, Press. in the new sociologyof education: and resistance Giroux,H. (1983).Theoriesof reproduction A criticalanalysis.Harvard Educational Review,53(3), 257-293. Gladwin,T. (1970). East is a big bird.Boston:BelknapPress. Glucksberg,S., Krauss,R. M., & Higgins, E. T. (1975). The developmentof referential communicationskills. In. F. D. Horowitz(Ed.), Reviewof child development research4. Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress. Gomes, L. A. (1979). Social interactionand social identity:A study of two kindergarten children. doctoraldissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Unpublished 544

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ERICKSON FREDERICK In theoryand practice. VanderZanden,J. W., & Pace, A. J. (1984). Educational psychology: New York:RandomHouse. & E. Souberman (Eds.),Mind Vygotsky,L. S. (1978). In M. Cole, V. J. Steiner,S. Scribner, MA: Harvard in society. The development processes.Cambridge, of higherpsychological UniversityPress. K. A., & Boggs, S. T. (1977). From verbalplay to talk story:The role of Watson-Gegeo, & C. Mitchell-Kernan children.In S. Ervin-Tripp routinein speecheventsamongHawaiian Press. Academic New York: Child discourse. (Eds.), HumanDevelto higherpsychological J. (1979). From social interaction processes. Wertsch, opment,22, 1-22. Saxon House. Willis,P. E. (1977). Learningto labour.Westmead,England: J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoringin problemsolving.Journal Wood, B., Bruner, and Psychiatry,17, 89-100. of ChildPsychology The Young, M., & Whitty,G. (Eds.).(1977). Society,state, and schooling.Rimger,England: FalmerPress.

AUTHOR FREDERICK ERICKSON, Professor of Education and Medicine, Room 207, Erickson Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. Specializations. School ethnography, intercultural relations, anthropology of education.

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