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Vol. 39, No. 4, July 2009, 501–515

Extending traditional explanations of illiteracy: historical and

cross-cultural perspectives
Keith Whitescarvera* and Judith Kalmanb
a
Department of Sociology, College of William and Mary, USA; bDepartamento de
Investigaciones Educativas, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados, Mexico City, Mexico

Providing a richer understanding of why the populations of economically

underdeveloped countries are less literate than those who live in wealthier nations
is the goal of this paper. Our analysis relies primarily on insights from our own
research: ethnographic studies concerning literacy learning and use among
unschooled and under-schooled women conducted during the late 1990s in
Mexico City and historical studies of literacy in Virginia, North Carolina and
Georgia along the southeastern seaboard of the USA. We examine three social
mechanisms that potentially obstruct access to literacy: (1) cultural ideas and
practices about schooling and written language; (2) family and personal attitudes
towards literacy: (3) the impact of poverty on family life and access to literacy.
Any one of these mechanisms may impede the dispersion of literacy. If all three
are present, as they frequently are, then the spread and use of literacy is likely to
be severely hindered.
Keywords: literacy; adult education; history of education; educational policy;
social mechanisms

Introduction
Providing a richer understanding of why the populations of economically under-
developed countries are less literate than those who live in wealthier nations is the
goal of this paper. We concentrate our analysis on intentional efforts to disseminate
literacy and suggest reasons as to why these efforts have rarely succeeded as desired.
Our analysis relies primarily on insights from our own research: ethnographic studies
concerning literacy learning and use among unschooled and under-schooled women
conducted during the late 1990s in Mexico City and historical studies of literacy in
Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia along the southeastern seaboard of the USA.
Conventional explanations of the problem focus on three concerns: (1) the high
levels of poverty in underdeveloped areas; (2) the lack of an infrastructure to support
basic human needs, including literacy; (3) insufficient formal education, typically due
to a lack of available funds to sustain schools. According to this view families in
rural areas with few financial resources either cannot afford to send their children to
school or else poverty-stricken families see limited economic benefit in educational
advancement (Doronila 2001). Furthermore, impoverished governments fail to
provide adequately funded schools due to a lack of financial resources (Goody and
Bennett 2001; Rogers and Uddin 2005; Whitescarver 2002). Government policies

*Corresponding author. Email: mkwhi2@wm.edu

ISSN 0305-7925 print/ISSN 1469-3623 online

# 2009 British Association for International and Comparative Education
DOI: 10.1080/03057920801903407
http://www.informaworld.com
502 K. Whitescarver and J. Kalman

biased against particular groups frequently create separate, although related,

limitations as elites may seek to maintain economic, social and political power
(Ramdas 1994; Triebel 2001; Whitescarver 1993).
Unquestionably, these mutually dependent factors shape possibilities for those
excluded from education. What historians and literacy scholars have discovered,
however, is that government and private efforts to rectify the traditional factors do not
eliminate literacy disparities (Heath 1972; Street 1984) and large-scale literacy programs
have a disappointing history (Ferreiro and Schmelkes 1999; Kalman in press).
Our paper examines three social mechanisms – (1) cultural ideas and practices
about schooling and written language; (2) family and personal attitudes toward
literacy; (3) the impact of poverty on family life and access to literacy – that
potentially obstruct access to literacy, thus augmenting traditional explanations.
Any one of these mechanisms may impede the dispersion of literacy. If all three are
present, as they were in our individual studies, then the spread and use of literacy is
likely to be severely hindered.

Comparative perspective
Scholars rarely undertake a study comparing the past to the present. In part this is
due to the fact that historians and those involved in contemporary research and
policy rarely interact professionally. In addition, we suspect that both types of
researchers fear that a comparison of places so different in time, location and culture
might be seen as implying causality or inevitability.
We discovered, however, in a series of conversations and written exchanges, that
literacy in rural and underdeveloped areas and economies on the edges of
industrialization share similar processes, and people have similar points of view
regardless of their location on the timeline. These shared processes and views arrive
out of shared life experiences (how individuals make a living, religious practices and
beliefs, who they see as readers and writers and what they see literacy being useful [or
not] for). As a consequence of the shared processes and views the mechanisms we
have identified are similar despite historical, cultural and temporal differences. The
dissemination of literacy in southern USA over the last 160 years was achieved
through a gradual process of increasing access to schools and print culture as a result
of government policies and economic needs. A process, we should add, that is not yet
complete. Southern states today still lag far behind the rest of the USA in measures
of educational attainment (US Census Bureau 2006).
The Mexican state has also made specific and systematic efforts since the 1950s
to spread literacy through such policies as expanding the school system, building
public libraries, distributing free national textbooks and, more recently, distributing
library books to schools. The current literacy rate for Mexico is around 90%
nationwide, although this is based on a self-declaration of the ability to read and
write a simple message. Furthermore, those individuals who are illiterate are
concentrated generally in the rural and indigenous areas. Speakers of indigenous
languages have an illiteracy rate of 34% nationally. In the regions of Guerrero
and Chiapas, however, illiteracy is as high as 61%. (Comisión Nacional para el
Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indı́genas 2007; Prawda and Flores 2001; UNESCO
Institute for Statistics 2006).
Mexico and the southern USA share many traits that make them ideal for
comparative analysis. Both had agriculture-based economies until well into the 20th
 Compare 503

century, high levels of poverty and a minority population that was tied to the land
through slavery or peonage, and both were on the periphery of the world economy.
They also shared extreme distributions of wealth. Both places experienced the
presence of a small ruling class that enjoyed an overwhelming proportion of their
respective region’s financial wealth and political and social authority (Hernández
Zamora 2004; Meyer and Beezley 2000; Wright 1996). Moreover, in both regions,
historically and today, political elites made or influenced crucial political decisions
about literacy. These decisions customarily involved such matters as who should
learn to read, what should be the content of available reading material and who has
the responsibility for creating and maintaining places of learning.
The qualitative research in Mexico was carried out from 1997 to 2000 in
Mixquic, a working class neighborhood on the eastern edge of Mexico City. This
locale had a strong and enduring agricultural tradition. During the second half of the
20th century, however, it experienced an accelerated process of urbanization. Our
research studied the array of opportunities for literacy use and learning in the town.
The data collected included field notes and audio recordings of classes, home visits,
unstructured and semi-structured interviews, photographs and participants’ written
productions (Kalman 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b, 2006).
The historical research on the southeastern USA arose from an investigation into
the successful effort to restrict reading and writing in the region in the 19th century.
The campaign against literacy in the South had its origins in the colonial era, but the
campaign resumed in earnest in the 1820s. The effects of the campaign, however,
were not limited to those living in the immediate vicinity of the vast plantations that
dotted the southern landscape. Widespread illiteracy had consequences for the whole
of southern culture, crossed boundaries of race, social class and geography and
continues to shape the political, economic and social life of the South today.

Theoretical perspectives
In this study we assume a theoretical perspective that conceives literacy to be more than
the rote learning of the most rudimentary aspects of reading and writing. Furthermore,
we assume that being literate refers to the ability to use written language to participate
in the social world. Reading and writing always occur in specific contexts and complex
circumstances with interactive, historical, political and ideological dimensions (Barton,
Hamilton, and Ivanic 2000; Kalman 2004a; Lave 1991; Zboray 1993).
Becoming literate involves learning how to intentionally manipulate written
language in order to participate in culturally valued events and as a means for
relating with others (Dyson 1997; Heath 1983). There are diverse ways to participate
in literacy events and there are both complex purposes and multiple consequences for
using reading and writing (Barton 1994; Besnier 1995; Kalman 1999; Scribner and
Cole 1981). Furthermore, access to written culture is permeated by power relations
that determine who reads and writes, who establishes the conventions that govern
written language and who exercises power through written language (Chartier 1995;
Gee 1996; Prinsloo 2005; Street 1993; Velez-Ibañez and Greenberg 1992).
Both socio-cultural and historical studies of literacy are concerned with the
notion of context. These studies assume that where reading and writing take place
and where literacy dissemination processes occur there are social, economic and
political scenarios, as well as social actors who construct the specific contexts where
reading and writing is accomplished. The studies also reveal how literacy practices
504 K. Whitescarver and J. Kalman

in different religious, political and commercial spaces have contributed to the

dissemination and diversification of literacy (Gilmore 1989; Graff 1979; Prinsloo and
Brier 1996; Zboray 1993). To give a well-known example, during the Reformation
Protestants, following their religious beliefs, experienced an increase in personal
readings of biblical texts. In turn, the increased reading of the Bible served as a
bridge to reading other kinds of administrative, commercial, political and even
literary texts (Eisenstein 1979; Stephens 1990).
The notion of access to literacy is a concept often used but rarely defined in
educational policy. We think of the concept as having two distinct components –
availability and access (Kalman 2003, 2004b). Availability refers to the physical
presence of print materials, the infrastructure necessary for its distribution
(deliveries, libraries, newspaper stands, post offices, etc.). Access refers to the social
conditions present when using written language and learning to read and write, such
as opportunities to participate in literacy events and interaction with other readers
and writers. Access also has to do with opportunities and modalities for learning to
read and write or extend existing practices (Barton and Hamilton 1998; Chartier
1995; Kalman 2003, 2004b). The mere existence of a collection of books in a library,
for example, does not by itself promote reading. It is necessary to understand both
why people go there and what goes on inside.
Lastly, we wish to be explicit about our definition of the South. The political
boundary of the Confederacy was not identical to the cultural boundary of the South
in the 19th century. Southern migration spilled over into the southernmost regions of
the Midwest and into the Southwest (Fischer and Kelly 2000; Perlmann and Margo
2001). As vast and diverse as the region was, however, historians in the last three
decades have identified numerous shared cultural rituals and cultural communities
(Cobb 2005; Isaac 1982; Joyner 1999; Pillsbury 2006; Wilson and Ferris 1989). A
study focusing on school attendance and literacy practices in two diverse regions of
North Carolina in the antebellum period, before the Civil War, suggested that shared
views of education and literacy was predominant in the antebellum South
(Whitescarver 1995), and another study focusing on teachers and school practices
highlighted shared southern views on those subjects in the postbellum era (Perlmann
and Margo 2001).

Literacy’s connection to cultural attitudes and practices

Cultural ideas and attitudes towards schooling and learnedness are elemental
attributes that can have a significant impact on the acquisition of literacy. If the
ability to read is highly valued in a culture, whether for religious, economic or
political reasons, then the people of that culture will extend literacy through a variety
of means (Cavallo, Chartier, and Associates 1999; Graff 1979; Hall 1989). If the
contrary view is widely shared – if literacy is devalued – then social mechanisms that
support literacy acquisition will be poorly formed. In this latter society schools will
be few in number, libraries will be rare and print materials will not be widely
dispersed (Whitescarver in press). Educational ideas and attitudes are part of a larger
set of cultural attitudes and practices.
In the southern USA cultural ideas and practices about learnedness and
schooling in the antebellum era, the focus of our analysis for this paper, had their
origins decades earlier in the colonial era. Once introduced, these ideas and practices
proved surprisingly resilient. Well-developed mindsets about both who should have
 Compare 505

access to education and the type of curriculum that should be offered became solidly
entrenched.
The emigrants from Britain to North America who moved to the southern
colonies contrasted greatly in their views on learnedness and schooling to those
British who settled in the northern colonies of New England. The difference in
attitudes towards literacy is exemplified by the declarations and actions of the
leaders of the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay colonies, respectively. Virginia’s
governor, William Berkeley, coming from the conservative English tradition that
viewed scholarly skills among the poor to be a threat to social stability, elucidated his
stance in 1671:
But I thank, God, there are no free schools nor printing [in Virginia], and I hope we
shall not have these [for a] hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and
heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the
best government. God keep us from both. (Hening 1823, 517)
In contrast, New England colonial leaders valued literacy for all because of the great
importance placed on direct reading of the word of God. For the colonists of
New England the Bible was, literally, the embodiment of truth and of God. In
support, the civil government in Massachusetts in 1642 required parents and masters
to take responsibility for instructing children and servants ‘to read and understand
the principles of religion and the capital lawes [sic] of the country’ (Shurtleff 1853, 6).
The introduction of slavery to Virginia and the enduring prevalence of a stratified,
patriarchal society ensured the continuation of the initial transatlantic inheritance
brought to the colony. Consequently, the direct influence of the written word remained
relatively weak. Three out of every four people in Virginia in the 18th century
were either illiterate or were largely confined to the oral medium (Isaac 1982). Even
into the 19th century, as ‘friends of education’ throughout the USA sought to foster
education, equally concerned southerners struggled to overcome the deeply embedded
cultural attitudes and practices to win support for public schooling (Kaestle 1983).
Emily Pillsbury Burke, a New Englander who taught in Georgia in the 1840s,
provides us with an example:
At the age when the youth of the North are confined at hard lessons for six hours a day
from one season to another, these children [in Georgia] are wasting the spring time of
their lives, in the fields and woods, climbing trees, robbing bird’s nests, or breaking up
the haunts of squirrels, and engaged in every kind of mischief, enough of which is always
to be found for idle hands to do. These are the children and youth that the advantages
of education which some enjoy at the South, have never yet reached, and probably never
will. (Burke 1994, 280–1)
This passage by a northern schoolteacher plying her trade in the South makes clear
that ideas about the dispersal of literacy practices were long-lived in the region.
Beliefs about literacy and education had evolved little in the two centuries since the
original European colonists brought their cultural attitudes with them to the
southern colonies.
Cultural ideas and practices that challenge the spread of literacy can also be
found in contemporary Mexico. In particular, the rural poor and the indigenous
population (two categories that are not mutually exclusive) commonly fail to see the
usefulness of schooling. For many adults their children’s participation in productive
activities is essential in making ends meet. Children’s cooperation at home is not
only an economic issue, however, it is also highly valued in terms of their
participation in family life. Traditional Mexican culture gives priority to caring for
506 K. Whitescarver and J. Kalman

the family (Cammarota 2004) and emphasizes the ‘importance of family relation-
ships and responsibilities and of maintaining family ties’ (Reese 2002, 40). Sending
children to school takes them away from their homes and from their household
duties and, furthermore, away from their parents’ close supervision.
Decisions to keep children at home, however, are not merely reactions to
economic pressures or the desire to closely supervise children’s upbringing. One
scholar of literacy in Mexico found that those living in rural communities in the 20th
century did not use schools in the same way as others do nor did they value universal
literacy in quite the same way. Parents regularly selected only a few of their children,
those identified by the parents as being best at learning Spanish, to go to school.
Even those attending school were kept there only as long as necessary to achieve
basic literacy. In Indian communities in particular writing was thought to be a
specialized skill belonging solely to scribes, and scribes, though few in number, could
be hired if necessary. Scribes have a select status in these communities and frequently
serve as gatekeepers to the village authorities. To assume that reading and writing
are practices that all children should learn is, in a very real sense, questioning the
fundamental, and highly hierarchical, nature of the village (Rockwell 1994).
A deep distrust of schooling, whether for deep-rooted economic, religious or
ideological reasons, greatly influences the acquisition of literacy. An illustration of
ideological distrust can be found in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. A
former center of the Mayan empire, Chiapas is economically the second poorest
state in Mexico. Not coincidentally, Chiapas has the second largest indigenous
population, with 27% of its inhabitants speaking an indigenous language (Comisión
Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indı́genas 2008). A substantial
proportion of indigenous people question the impact of modernization and
globalization. They rightfully view schools as having the capability of changing
traditional values and time-honored ways of life (Levinson and Holland 1996).
Opposition to schools among those living in rural areas is certainly not
unanimous. Still, the national census for the year 2000 indicates that over 6% of
children between the ages of 6 and 12 in Mexico do not attend primary school
(Instituto Nacional de Estadı́stica Geografı́a e Informática 2007). Sometimes
children are not sent to school at all, while in other cases they start school but
leave in the early grades to return to their parents’ vigilance and housework.
Berenice, now in her forties, described her experience as a young child, who attended
school for only a brief period (Kalman 2005, 193):
I only went to school for two months because my stepfather said that it wasn’t worth it.
He used to say that it wasn’t worth it, that it was for good for nothings. Then he sent me
to work.
Her stepfather’s conviction that going to school ‘wasn’t worth it’ was based on a
belief that time spent in class was wasted and a fear that school would make Berenice
lazy, thus causing her to be economically unproductive. Believing that there is little,
if any, economic incentive for higher levels of education is not uncommon among the
rural poor (Gertler and Glewwe 1992; Kannapel and DeYoung 1999). The women in
the Mixquic study held different views from those of their parents: they saw literacy
and schooling as a way ‘to get ahead’. Some of their motivations for attending the
class were to be able to help their children or grandchildren with their homework, to
be able to deal with official documents and to be able to better defend themselves in
the public sphere. They also viewed their lack of literacy as one of the obstacles to
 Compare 507

economic betterment and ‘becoming somebody’. They were clearly familiar with and
willing to adopt, albeit to differing degrees, the contemporary dominant discourses
about literacy.
In these isolated locales schools and other resources related to print culture are
meager. In rural areas the use of reading and writing is scarce, often limited to
schoolwork or specific domains, such as writing minutes for community meetings or
obtaining official documents. Writing in public scenarios is frequently left to the
local literacy brokers, creating few opportunities for interactions around print. The
combination of local cultural attitudes, people’s limited everyday contact with
written language and a lack of access to other readers and writers who might support
literate competence and agency (Brandt 2001) creates a complex obstacle to literacy.

Family and personal attitudes regarding literacy

Similar to, but distinct from, cultural attitudes and practices are family and personal
attitudes regarding literacy. The distinction lies in the fact that the family and
personally held attitudes are not as deeply ingrained in a culture, and such views are
less likely to be bound by time or place. Instead family and individual attitudes arise
from personally held notions (albeit socially construed) of the importance of
education and the value of literacy in the household and personal spheres.
To give an example, many poor whites were indifferent to learning to read in the
antebellum South. In the early 1850s John Frederick Mallett, a book peddler for the
American Tract Society, visited much of the rural countryside of eastern North
Carolina in his efforts to distribute religious pamphlets and books for the missionary
society. In his journal he frequently complained of the apathetic, even hostile,
reception he commonly received from families that he visited.
I visited all and … found 23 miserable poor families only two could read. I also visited
some Roman Catholics and Hard Shell Baptists. I hardly know which of them is the best
people, but think the Catholics have it. The Hardshell were opposed to books Prayer
and in a word to good and did all they could against me in every way. They are for the
most part a poor ignorant set. Led on by a corrupt and ignorant set of preachers.
(Mallett 1853–1884)
In Mallett’s view, the key factor that created the spirit of indifference about the need
for availability to print among these poor families of eastern Carolina was religion.
The fundamentalist Hardshell Baptists contentedly participated in an oral culture
and saw no need for education or print materials.
In the rural South of the 19th and early 20th centuries great importance was
placed on the school as a principal literacy generating space (Zboray 1993). This is
likewise true in contemporary rural Mexico. Whether an individual goes to school or
not weighs heavily on whether that individual learns to read and write, particularly
when the circulation of print materials and the dissemination of literacy practices are
generally absent in other local contexts.
Although public education is available to girls in rural Mexico, family attitudes
to schooling for women have had a major impact on girls’ access to formal learning.
For generations girls were not allowed to go to school. They were socially
subordinated to their parents and to a very narrow idea about what women should
and should not do.
Ethnographic research in Mexico has shown that for many women reading and
writing are still distant activities, usually performed by others. One woman in her
508 K. Whitescarver and J. Kalman

early sixties noted that when she was a child ‘nobody encouraged us, nobody called
us, nobody said, go to school, you’re going to need it’ (Kalman 2004b, 42). Parents
were suspicious of schools and were uncomfortable letting their daughters out of
their sight. They instilled in their girls a sense of fear of strangers. Licha, a woman in
her late seventies, stopped going to the classes that a local teacher gave in his home
when she was seven years old. ‘I was afraid to go to school, so they [her parents] told
me ‘‘what do you prefer, make tortillas or go to school?’’ I preferred the tortillas. I
was very happy to grind corn, and I wasn’t afraid’ (p. 43).

The impact of poverty and social exclusion on family life and literacy access
There is an abundance of research on the relationship between poverty and
educational outcomes. Repeatedly, studies reveal the impact of a lack of family
resources on achieving substantial levels of literacy (Soltow and Stevens 1980;
Haveman and Wolfe 1995; Hill and Sandfort 1995; Whitescarver 1995). Researchers
have also pointed out that there are important underlying social and cultural causes
in the ways that people understand literacy and construct literacy practices. People
have different expectations and goals about what and why they want to learn to read
and write and how to meet their objectives. They approach and appropriate the
language and literacy practices available to them based on their knowledge and
interpretations of literacy. Several scholars (Delpit 1988; Heath 1983) have
illustrated how distance or proximity to mainstream language and literacy practices
influence and shape learning. Gee (1996) pointed out the role of social discourses in
the construction of knowledge about reading and writing. Others (Moll 2000; Taylor
1997) have noted that within a school context learners’ knowledge and uses of
literacy often go unnoticed because they are not mainstream practices. People
mobilize what Moll called ‘funds of knowledge’, a wealth of understandings and
resources that shape their participation in literacy events and learning activities. It is
our contention that well-meaning efforts to improve literacy will continue to have
meager results until more substantial considerations are given to understanding why
poverty creates such a stranglehold on access to literacy.
The family is the primary decision-making unit that allocates time, resources and
the activities of its members, including children (Walters and Briggs 1993). Families
in the South in the 19th century and in rural Mexico in the late 20th century
frequently lived in tenuous economic circumstances and were forced to make
decisions about whether it was best for children to go to school or to work. This,
however, is not a simple issue of choosing between getting an education or getting a
job. Hernández Zamora (2004), for example, found that in places like Mexico City
the poor were excluded from the social and economic institutions that made gainful
employment possible. In rural areas the situation was dramatic: in 2004 five million
families received 300 pesos bimonthly in federal aid to ‘keep them from starving to
death’ (p. 37) and an additional 200 pesos as long as their children stayed in school.
This stipend of approximately $55 dollars was the only cash income available to
many families. People who do not read (and write) cannot be separated ‘from the
social economic system that continuously closes its doors, denying them entrance to
the world of work, education and literacy’ (p. 40).
Research on southern families in the USA working in the textile industry
revealed that the short-term needs of the family economy took precedence over long-
term aspirations for the children. When economic survival was at stake schooling
 Compare 509

took a back seat (Hall et al. 1987). Farm families, living a subsistence existence in the
South, similarly gave a priority to family needs. Due to the cyclical nature of
agricultural work, however, in some circumstances school and work were combined.
Of course, the greater the family need, the less likely it was that children would be
allowed to attend school (Walters and Briggs 1993; Rivero 2000).
Poverty affects literacy opportunities beyond that of limiting school attendance.
For one, a lack of discretionary income limits the availability of the world of print.
When asked about what books, other print materials, pencils and paper existed in
their childhood homes several of the women in Kalman’s (2004b, p. 45) rural Mexico
study answered in similar terms: ‘in our homes there was a lot of necessity, a lot of
hunger, a large family, a lot of brothers and sisters’. The implication, of course, is
that acquiring books and other objects related to reading and writing is a luxury that
families cannot afford.
In addition, poverty can limit the extent to which a child is placed in school. It was
only in the 1980s that the public school system expanded to the point that all children of
school age were guaranteed a seat in a classroom. Currently 96% of children aged 6–12
go to school, the 4% that do not attend school typically either live in the remotest areas
and must walk one hour or more to the nearest facility or are the children of migrant
workers who move about constantly (Instituto Nacional de Estadı́stica Geografı́a e
Informática 2007; Santos and Carvajal 2001). Following crops from place to place
makes it almost impossible for a child to follow a program of study: every move implies
picking up and starting over, and many children work in the fields with their parents,
attending classes after eight hours of picking fruit or vegetables. Also, school atten-
dance in and of itself does not ensure academic success or personal fulfillment.
One of the current issues of educational equity in Mexico is keeping children and
adolescents in school. Because the country has been stuck in deep economic crisis for
several decades families with scarce resources give priority to the most immediate
needs: food, shelter, clothing and medicine. Schooling becomes a luxury that many
cannot afford: children are needed to contribute to the family income or take on
household responsibilities so that both parents can work. Furthermore, schooling
is costly: there are transportation costs, school supplies to purchase and the
contributions solicited by schools to finance festivals or to purchase needed
equipment (Levinson 1999; Reese 2002). As a result, during times of economic crisis
there is a growing tendency to pull children out of school and mobilize funds for
more urgent family needs.1
What is more, poor people live in poor neighborhoods. The resources for an
enriched basic education, including after school activities, libraries, cultural visits,
sports, field trips, travel and exposure to and participation in the arts, simply do not
exist. For families struggling to get by economic hardship means making difficult
choices about their children’s schooling. Here is how one woman attending a literacy
group in Mexico City explained not going to school as she reflected on her
experience and her place in her family’s organization (Kalman 2005b, 193).
I went until third grade. But my father left us when we were very small and my mother
had to go to work, since I was the youngest and the only girl, I have two brothers and I
had to stay home and help, I had to put dinner on the table for them (literally: I had to
feed them).
Girls were needed at home to take care of their male siblings, to ‘feed them’, help
with domestic responsibilities or to work out of economic necessity. Furthermore,
510 K. Whitescarver and J. Kalman

school was for boys, not for girls: it was assumed that girls would eventually marry
and have a husband that would provide for them. Boys on the other hand would
become the heads of their households and have to provide for their families. These
women explain why they did not go to school from the position of a person whose
obligation was to follow the will of others. They had to go to work, they had to help
and they had to stay home.
A grave consequence of the lack of access to schooling for generations in the
same family and community is that the language, knowledge and practices of formal
education continue to be unfamiliar and absent from the contexts of daily life. When
literacy practices are scarce, finding and relating to other readers and writers
becomes difficult, understanding different types of discourses and texts is hard and
exposure to competent literate behaviors is reduced to what the immediate
surroundings can offer. This is not to say, however, that literacy is necessarily
absent from marginalized communities; reading and writing may be used for a
variety of purposes. However, many of these are unacknowledged by mainstream
institutions. Reading popular publications are not recognized as ‘real’ reading;
writing personal diaries or messaging on a cell phone are not considered ‘real’
writing.

Making the invisible visible for education

The three social mechanisms that we identified – cultural attitudes and practices,
family and personal attitudes toward literacy, and the impact of poverty and social
exclusion on family life and literacy access – can thwart the best intentions of policy-
makers and educators if they are left unaddressed. A sound and comprehensive
approach to developing educational and cultural policies that increases access to
literacy must recognize and engage these overlapping and mutually sustaining social
mechanisms.
When these mechanisms are acknowledged, the invisible becomes visible.
Families’ views and circumstances, for example, connect to larger social, political
and economic processes, reflecting, on the one hand, cultural attitudes and practices
and well-embedded personal views of the value of education and, on the other, the
public policies and the economics of reading and writing. At the same time
individual families’ decisions and survival frequently depends on all household
members becoming economically productive, thus limiting opportunities for study.
With enhanced visibility any economic policies and circumstances that may preclude
both access and availability to literacy may be laid bare.
Uncovering these social mechanisms should also improve educators’ abilities to
contemplate the depth and complexity of literacy learning. This may, in turn,
introduce new issues surrounding existing literacy practices while causing policy-
makers to rethink literacy programs and actions in ways that might contribute to the
success of future literacy efforts.
To give one example, evidence from research in Mexico reveals that one of the
impacts of poverty on the dissemination of literacy is that poor people, particularly
women, are bound to their neighborhoods, having very few opportunities to leave
them. Their knowledge of reading and writing is limited to those practices that are
readily available in the social spaces of their everyday lives. This means that if
reading and writing have only gained ground within the community within the last
60 years, (with the arrival of news stands, the opening of a library, the building of a
 Compare 511

local primary school and the establishment of a post office, for example) and has
historically been limited to only a few actors and a few communicative purposes,
then the opportunities to learn and use literacy will also be limited. Reading and
writing are learned in large part from interacting with other readers and writers and
using literacy for a variety of communicative purposes, in different settings and with
different types of texts. It also requires understanding a variety of different social
discourses (Gee 1996). For literacy to spread in places such as the one described
above programs need to provide situations for learners to interact with competent
readers and writers who could show them the intricacies of literacy. A literacy
program for people who live in places that are geographically isolated and/or
excluded from social, cultural and economic resources would have to broaden their
agenda to include long-term cultural policies and programs as a way of diversifying
literacy use (Kalman 2004b).
School reform alone is not enough to impact on how reading and writing is
disseminated: opportunities for reading and writing must be developed where
historically there have been few. This implies that any changes suggested at the
school, classroom or educational program level must be accompanied by actions that
address the issues of access and availability in the community.
As a way of concluding, we offer the metaphor of a tributary as a way to view the
challenge. Tributaries steadily bring their water to a parent river and as they flow
they can seem immutable. Tributaries are not absolute, however. They mix and they
change. Usually change is slow, but it can transpire more quickly if a flood occurs or
if there is deliberate human intervention. Similarly, social mechanisms change over
time, although it may not seem so at first. What is required to speed up the process,
however, is first the recognition of the complexities of literacy and then political will,
resources and action.

Note
1. Gregorio Hernández Zamora (2005, 37) described Mexico’s economic situation as being
the result of a policy of deliberate economic destruction that has deepened the divide
between the haves and have-nots. He argued that recent development policies have created
‘the impossibility for a normal life’.

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