Erickson_School Literacy, Resoning and Civility

8/12/2019 Erickson_School Literacy, Resoning and Civility

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School Literacy, Reasoning, and Civility: An Anthropologist's PerspectiveAuthor(s): Frederick EricksonSource: Review of Educational Research, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 525-546Published by: American Educational Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1170173.

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Review of Educational ResearchWinter, 1984, Vol. 54, No. 4, Pp. 525-546

School Literacy,Reasoning,andCivility:An Anthropologist'sPerspectiveFrederick Erickson

Michigan State UniversityThis papertakesa perspectiveon schools,teaching,and learning hatplacesinthe foregroundhe socialorganization nd culturalpatterning f people'sworkineveryday ife. In that perspective he notion of literacy,as knowledgeand skilltaughtand learned n school, is not separable rom the concretecircumstances fits uses inside and outsideschool,nor is it easilyseparableromthe situationof itsacquisition n the school as a social form and as a way of life. The school can beseenas an arenaof politicalnegotiationhat embodies ndividual ndgroup nterestsand ideologies.It is reasonable o expect that variouskinds of literaciesmightrepresent varietyof interestsand be embedded n a varietyof beliefsystems.We can distinguishanalyticallybetween iteracyand schooling,or betweenthearithmetical nalog numeracy, ndschooling,or between he latestmanifestation,computer iteracy, and schooling.In ordinaryusage,however,the distinction

betweenformalknowledgeand school is blurred.This may be for good reasons,some of whichI will explore n the discussion hat follows.Literally,iteracyrefersto knowledgeof lettersand of theirusein readingandwriting, ustas theuglywordnumeracyrefers o knowledgeand use of numbers.But to be letteredmeans morethanthis,and hasdone so in the West since the establishment f European choolsby the monasticchaptersof cathedralsn the earlyMiddleAges.Literacy,as beinglettered,has to do with strategyand prestige.This prestige spartlydue to the strategicpower that comes from masteryof an informationcommunication ystem.This prestigealso is derived romvaluesof aestheticsandmoralvirtuewhich mask the issue of power.Indeed, n 17thcenturyEnglish, o belewd is not to be sexuallyunrestrained,but to be unlettered.It is only later inEnglishusagethat lewdness ook on sexualconnotations,whichgraduallybecamethe mainusage.Theprestigefulnessf schoolingalso mixespowerwith thejustificationof powerin morality.One is reminded hat in the West,the institutionof schoolingbeganin the medievalChurch,withliteracyustifiedas a meansto specializedknowledgethatcould be employedin maintaining he intellectualand social structureof theChurch,which was seen as a means to collective and individual salvation. Thesamespecialknowledgeof lettersand numberswas also employed n maintainingthe rule of secular andholders,whosegrowthand whose systemsfor distributionof food enabledthe existenceof feudalsocietyitself.In colonial New England heinstitutionof public schoolingwasalsojustifiedon moralgrounds,withknowledgeof lettersbeingthe route to individual alvation hroughreading he Bible,and thesamespecializedknowledgeapplying n the developmentof small freeholdagricul-ture, commerce,and eventually ndustry.In the commentsthat follow I do notwant to reduceschoolingto a set of purelyutilitarian unctions,nor do I want todo so withliteracy.Butrelationships etween he variousutilitiesand moralitiesof

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FREDERICKERICKSONkinds of schooling,kindsof literacy,kindsof work,and kindsof power n societyare central o theargument willmake. Let me beginwith a few narrative ignettes.

A. Literacyn a SteelPlantIn 1965 I worked for a steel companyin Chicago n helpingto organizeand conduct on a pilotbasisa program f on-the-job raining orhighschooldropouts.Thecompanywas a steelfabricatingirm in whichbarsandsheetsof steel werecut to orderedengthsand thenshipped o buyerswho usedthesteel in manufacturing.The program nvolved education n basicacademicskillsand workexperience.The curricular mphasisof the programwastheresultof an informalanalysisbycompanymanagement f the reasonsbehindthe highturnoverof over 200 minorityworkers,argelyblack,who had beenhired over a 2-yearperiod.Most of theseworkersquit or werefired beforehavingworked n an entryleveljob for 6 months. Absenteeismand lack ofthe elementaryand readingcomputationalskills necessaryto read workordersand to measureand cut quantitiesof steel werereportedby foremenand by plantmanagersas the majorcauses for the brevityof the careersofthe new minority employeesof the company. Accordingly,a programoftraining n basic skills was established,duringwhich the traineeswould berequired o come to workeveryday,on time, and learnin the planthow toworkthe machines,and in the classroomhow to readandcompute.As I worked with the traineesit became apparent hat very few of thedozen traineeshad much troublewithreadingworkorders,orwithmeasuringlengths of steel. Three of the traineesdid have difficultywith this thatpersisted.The others learnedvery quicklyto measureand cut steel and toread the lengthsand numbersof cut pieces that were written on the workorders.As the weeks progressedt also became apparent hat the traineesexperiencedrecurrentdifficulties with their foremen and fellow workers,almost all of whom were MiddleEuropean mmigrantsor the childrenofimmigrants.The traineeswere criticized for talkingunintelligiblyand forstanding n what looked to supervisorsike lazy postureswhileworkingontheirmachines.Foremenwould come by and say thingslike, Getmoving,you . We're not paying you to _ _ . After a few weeksmost of the traineesbecame convinced that most of the white supervisorsand workerswere racist. At the end of 12 weeks some of the traineeshadquit, some had stayed.All but one, to my knowledge,were ableby then toreadwork ordersand cut steel. Most had been able to do this at the outset.

B. Literacy n a HighSchoolNightProgramTwo of the steelcompanytraineesdecidedthattheywouldenrollin nightschoolclassesto begin againto workfor theirhighschooldiplomas.I tookone of them to registration ne evening.He went through he registrationprocedure ndsignedup for an Englishcourseat thejuniorlevel,whichwasthe level at which he had droppedout of school 2 yearspreviously.Thefollowingweek,on the morningafter the youngman had attendedhis firsteveningclassI asked him whattheywereassigned o do. Withdespair n hiseyes he said, We're eadingBeowulf.

C. Literacyon IceIn the summer of 1981, while teaching at the University of Alaska,526



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEFairbanks, met an Eskimo n his mid-thirtieswho was nowgoingto collegeand whose father had been a subsistencehunter. The son still huntedoccasionally.He said thatas a child he learned hat ifyou want to hunt sealyou haveto learnto think like a seal.

As an anthropologistmy mainquestionsaboutliteracyand numeracyare these:Given that for approximately5 million yearshuman societieshave managedtoreartheir young so that almost every one in the society was able to master theknowledgeand skillsnecessary or survival,why does this not happen n modernsocietieswith schools?Or does it happen-do schoolsteach what is necessary,butdefineand measureachievement n suchwaysthat it looks as if largeproportionsof the school populationfail?Why is it that when we know that the cognitiveoperationsnecessary o learnto speaka languageare masteredby almost everychildby age5, manyof thosesame children eemunable o learn o read n school,eventhough he cognitivecomplexityof learning o read,at leastat theearlystages,is so much less thanthatrequired o learnto speak?Whycan a child makechangesuccessfullyat the grocerystoreand fail to do those same arithmeticoperationscorrectlywhen presentedwith a math worksheet n the classroom?In currentpublicdiscourse bout iteracy,arewetalkingaboutknowledge nd skill ndecodingletters,or are we talkingaboutbeing lettered s a markerof socialclass statusandculturalcapital?Do we see the schooldiploma mainlyas evidenceof masteryof knowledgeand skill in literacy, n the literaland narrowsense of the term?Idon'tthink so. I thinkthat the highschooldiplomafunctions, or ow SESstudents,primarilyas a docilitycertificate.Were it otherwise,private ndustrycould not becontentto allowpublicschools o producegraduates-potentialfutureemployees-who cannotread,write,or do simplearithmetic.This wouldmakeespeciallygoodsense f ordinarywork n most ofthecompany's obsdoes notreallyrequireiteracy,as schoolsdefineit.For those social sciences that take a societal and culturalperspectiveon theorganization f human sociallife,a most fundamental oncernaboutthe relationsbetweenliteracyand schoolingis to questionwhetherfostering iteracy s in factthe central activity of public schooling as an institutionof mass society. Theschool'sother activitiesmay play equallyimportantroles,in contradiction o theroleof the school in fostering iteracy.These otheractivities nclude socialsorting,the maintenanceof prestigeof the high orms of letteredness s items of culturalcapital,child care for workingparents,and keeping young people off the labormarket.The variousactivitiesof schoolsare organizedso that classpositionis in mostinstancesmaintained rom one generation o the next. One need not assumethatschool personneldo this deliberately.Yet survey data on school achievementconsistentlypresentus withan unavoidable ocialfact:Onlyin a minorityof casesdoes the modernpublic school function for individualsor for societyas HoraceMann envisionedthat it would, as the balancewheel of democracy. The issuecan be investigatedwithoutdecidingin advancewhetherone or anotherkind ofactivity (function) is predominant.A useful question is, How do the variousactivitiesof schools worktogether-how are they organized n relationship-forstudentsof varyingclass, racial,and ethnic backgrounds? n short,the relationsbetween he manifestcurriculumof schoolsubjectmatter-literacy andnumeracyin the narrow ense-and the hiddencurriculumof socialsortingand rankingare

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FREDERICKRICKSONan issue of centralinterest for the social sciences,as well as for educatorsandcitizens.Variation in Literacies and Intelligences

Cognitive Abilities as Domain-SpecificRecent work in cognitive anthropologyand in cross-culturalpsychologyhasinvestigatedcomplex thoughtprocessesamong nonliteratepeoplesas a topic ofinterest n its ownrightand as a baseline orcomparisonwith thethoughtprocessesof literatepeople. It appearsfrom this workthat, contrary o an earlierview inanthropologyand in lay opinion, nonliteratepeople are capableof systematicthinkingthat involvesabstraction.Gladwin(1970), for example,investigated hereasoning hat is involvedin Polynesiannavigation.Sailors rom these islandsare

able to travelfromone small atollto anotheracrosshundredsof milesof open seaand arrive at their exact destination.They navigateusing the stars and otherorientationcues, but make use of the starsin ways very different rom Westernnavigational easoning.Their navigationsystemis thoroughly ystematic,but itsbasicprinciplesand categoriesdifferfundamentallyrom the postulatesand prin-ciplesthat formthe foundation or Westernnavigation.The Polynesiansystemistaughtby oldernavigatorso neophyteswithoutusingwriting.Polynesian raditionalnavigations an especiallyapttest case forthepropositionthat nonliterate hinkingcan be highlyregularand abstract, incesailingprovidesa crucial est of the adequacyof the systemof reasoningand of its teaching; f thesystemis flawed,or if the neophytedidn't learn it correctly, he boatand its crewarelost at sea. Interestingly, owever,whengiven Western ests of mentalability,Gladwin'snavigators coredverylow. On the teststhey seemedto lackthe kindsof cognitiveabilities heywereable to demonstrate n the open sea.Childsand Greenfield 1980) havedone a seriesof investigations f the thinkingunderlying raditionalweavingin Chiapas,Mexico, and of the ways that experi-enced weaversteach inexperiencedones. Lave(1977) has studied the arithmeticthinking of apprenticetailors in Liberia.Again, the weaversand tailors whenworkingwiththreadand cloth canbe seento becapableof measurement perationsand other kinds of reasoning hat they are unable to displaywhen given Westernschool-like ntelligenceandachievement ests.In these and similarstudies,people'sabilities to reasonappear o be domain-specificrather han generalizable crosstaskdomains thatdifferin surface orm.This is a fundamentalpoint.

Literacy and Schooling as Task DomainsA numberof theoristshaveargued hat eventhoughnonliteratehinkingcan beshown to be systematic, hereis still a qualitativedifferencebetweenthe thinkingof nonliterateand literatepeople. Literacy, hese scholarsargue,enablesone toescape he limitationsplacedon cognitionby spokendiscourse.Speakingoccurs nrealtime, with an immediacyof presencebetweenuttererand utterance.Writtendiscourse tepsoutsiderealtime. Once the writerhas inscribeda text the writer sable to stepbackfromit andtake a distanced, riticalviewof itscontent.Reflectivethinkingand self-critical nalysis s enabledby this, it is argued,by scholars uchas Ong (1977),Goody (1977),Luria 1959),andOlson(1977).Scribnerand Cole (1981, p. 4) characterize hese assertionsas GreatDividetheories.Theymaintain hat to proposea vastqualitativegulfbetween iterateand528



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEnonliteratereasoning s to repeatthe more generalpresumption n cognitiveanddevelopmentalpsychology e.g.,both in classical earning heoryand in Piagetiandevelopmentaltheory) that reasoningabilities,once acquired,are relativelyorabsolutelycontext independent.Recent workby Cole and others is beginning oshowus, in contrast o the conventionalview of mentalabilitiesasessentially ixed,that reasoning, iteracy,and numeracyoperationsappear o be much more labilethan was previously hought.Human reasoning eems to consist of skills thatarereflexivelyconstituted n the context of situation of use and purpose.This is aconceptionof thinkingas setsof domain-specific nd situation-specific perationsrather hansetsof generalabilities.Scribner nd Cole (1981) speakof thesecognitiveoperationsaspractices:

Bya practicewe mean a recurrent, oal-directedequenceof activitiesusinga particular echnologyand particular ystemsof knowledge.We use theterm skills o refer o the coordinated etsof actionsinvolvedin applyingthis knowledgein particularsettings. A practice,then, consists of threecomponents: echnology, knowledge,and skills .... Literacy s not simplylearninghow to readandwritea particular criptbutapplying hisknowledgeforspecificpurposes n specificcontextsof use. (p. 236)Literacy, oo, is seenas a practice:

Literacy s not simplylearninghow to read and write a particular criptbutapplying his knowledge or specificpurposes n specificcontextsof use. (p.236)

Byextension, numeracy, r theability o navigate,orto run a microcomputer,or any other domainof knowledgeand skillis seen as notjust cognitiveoperationin isolation but as cognitive operationemployinga specific technologytowardspecificends. All literacies, hen, are radicallyconstitutedby theircontextsofuse. This is not the opposite of context independence,hat is, it is not contextdependence rfield dependence.Rather, t is a fundamentallydifferentnotion ofthe relations between an individual's intellectualcapabilitiesand the specificmaterial and social situationsin which those capabilitiesare employed.To callthesecapabilities ractices s to saythat anindividual's bility o think sdialogicallydefined, that is, constitutedby (a) other people in particular orms of socialrelationship, b)the physicalobjects utensils, ools)andsymbols words,numbers)with which the individual nteracts,directlyor vicariously,n doing the thinking.Changethe physicalform of the tools or symbols,or changethe social formsofrelationsamongthe peoplewith whomthe individual s learning he practice orisperforming t once learned)and one has profoundlychangedthe nature of theinteraction-the natureof the learning ask.Indoingso one has alsochangedwhatin ordinaryparlancewe call the abilityof the individual.Fromthis point of view, it is not surprisinghat a child can displayarithmeticcompetencewhile dealingwith changeat the grocerystore and yet seem to lackthatperformancewhendoingwhat seems to be the same arithmeticproblemona worksheetor at the blackboard n the classroom,even if the problemweredisplayedusingpicturesof coins with which the childis familiarrather hanusingnumeralswith which the child mightbe less familiar.Still, a pictureof a coin isnot a coin, and relationswith the teacherand fellowstudentsare not the same as529



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FREDERICKRICKSONrelationswitha storeclerk(whenone hasmoney)and one's little brotheror friend(beforewhom one's displayof appropriate erformance arriesno negativesocialand emotional consequences).The nature of the task in the store and in theclassrooms verydifferent nd so is the natureof the abilitiesrequiredo accomplishit.

Cursoryreadingin the current debates about excellence in education (e.g.,NationalCommission on Excellence,1983) and in standard extbooks n educa-tionalpsychologyusedin undergraduateeachereducation e.g.,Biehler,1974,pp.460-480, 571-576, 605-615; Good & Brophy, 1980, p. 487; VanderZanden &Pace,1984,pp. 99-120) shows hatthe unexaminedpresuppositions-theculturallylearnedontological postulates-about the nature of individualability that arecurrent n policy decisionmaking ndin teachereducationareverydifferent romthe viewjust presented.This new view turnsthe notionof individualability nsideout by seeing it as socially constitutedratherthan as context independentandlocated inside the individual alone. This is so fundamentala critique of theconventionalwisdom of educationalpracticein the United States that it bearsfurtherdiscussion.We can ask what the evidencebaseis for the new perspective n ability,and onthe natureof various iteracies,broadlyconstrued.The majorstudyis thatalreadycited: Scribnerand Cole, 1981. In a set of relatedinvestigations hey comparedreasoningpatternsof Liberianswho were iterate n Western cript, n Arabic cript,in a traditionalLiberian cript,with the reasoningpatternsof Liberianswho werenonliterate.Evidencefor a subject'sreasoningpatternswas derivedfromanalysisof that subject'sbehavioron standard ests and on speciallydesigned ests. Datacollectionin some of the substudies ncludedclose observationand interviewing,so that those sourcesof informationabout the subject'sreasoningprocesseswereavailable n additionto the evidenceof the outcomesof thoseprocesses hat couldbe inferred romthe content of the choices the subjectmadein completing he testitems.Scribner nd Cole werealso ableto conduct a crucialcomparison hathad neverbeen made before: that between literatesand nonliterates,controllingfor theinfluenceof schoolingindependentof the influenceof literacy tself on thoughtprocesses.This comparisonwas possiblebecause of the traditionalscriptfoundamongthe Vai, a Liberian ribalgroup.The Vai scriptis taughtoutsideschoolsandis used forpurposes uchas letterwritingandkeeping armingists and records.Vai script is not used in written interactionwith Western or Muslim-schooledliterates;hatis, it is notused n interethnic ommerceorin fillingoutgovernmentalforms.Becauseamongthe Vai there wereboth unschooledand schooledpersonswho were literatein Vai script, Scribnerand Cole were able to compare theperformanceof the two subgroupsof Vai literates o see what effects schoolingitselfmighthave on the capacityof the Vai literates o demonstratehigherordercognitiveskillsin test situations.Scribnerand Colewerealso able to compareVailiterates ndnonliterates, othsets of subjectsnot havingattendedeithera WesternEuropean-derivedchool(British ystem)or a Muslimschool.The naturaloccurrence f thesecomparisongroups n LiberiagaveScribner ndColea naturalexperimental ituation n whichtheycouldask whether iteracyperse influencedpeople o use so-called higher rder hinking,orwhether t appearedthat those ways of thinking and the capacityto display them in Westerntestsituationswasa consequenceof the experienceof schoolingrather han of literacyalone. This is a key issue in the debate over the GreatDivide theories of the530



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEinfluence of literacyon thought.Proponentsof the Great Divide theories haveargued hat literacyenablesgreaterabstraction,decontextualized se of problem-solvingskills,Western-styleogicalreasoning,andotheraspectsof whatpsychome-tricians consider to be higher order thinking. Opponentsof the Great Dividetheorieshaveargued hat the capacityof literatepeopleto displaysuch skills n testsituations s due not to the influenceof literacy o much as it is to the influenceofschooling.Studentsin school, it is argued,learn the point of test-likeproblemsituations.They learnhow to see in test items whatthe testerdesigned he item totest. Nonliteratepeoplewho arealso nonschooleddo not learn how to read hetest items the way schooled people have learnedto do. The ability to performappropriatelyn school-like easoningasks, hen,is seen not as evidenceof inherent(culture-free) ognitiveabilitybut as evidenceof culture-specificearning.Bygoingto school,children earnthe culturalprinciples oracting n school-likewayswhenplayingschool-likereasoninggames. Nonschooled(and nonliterate)people maypossessthe samereasoningabilitiesas do those who havebeen schooled; t is justthatthe nonschooleddo not possessthe culturalknowledgenecessaryo be abletoplaythe school-likereasoninggamesthat the test itemspresent.Scribnerand Cole's results 1981, pp. 242ff)suggest hatschoolingby itselfhadmuch more influenceon the capacityof the Vai to displayabilitywith certainthoughtprocesses han did literacyby itself.Moreover,whileattendanceat Englishschool did seem to influencestudent's hinking,that patternof influencewas notnearlyso thoroughgoing,o absolute,as conventionalwisdomwouldexpect.Thekindsoftasksat which heEnglish-schooled ai faroutperformedheirnonschooledfellowsweretasks that entailed deliberatecomment on the procedures hat werebeingdone:explanationsof sortingpatterns,of logic,of grammatical ules,of rulesof games. Schooling showed some influence on some other tasks:story recall,abstraction, ecall of lists of objects, ogic problems.But on othertasksschoolingshowedno apparent nfluence: lexibility n sorting numberof dimensionsused),word definitions, incremental recall. Urban experience,rather than schooling,seemedto influencea preferenceorgroupingobjectsby classmembership nd theuse of taxonomic clustering n free recall. These last findings,the authors note(1981, p. 243), runcontrary o those from most otherstudies,as does the findingthat urbanexperiencerather han schooling nfluenced he subjects'performancein directions hatother researcherswould attribute o schooling.Inshort,even schooling,whichappearedo havestrongernfluence hanliteracyover subjects'ways of thinking,did not seem to stimulatewhat could be calledoverallcognitivecompetence.Rather, choolseemedto stimulatea narroweret ofabilities: he abilitiesinvolved in knowinghow to comment to an observerandpresumably o one's self, on what one has been doing in a task situationwhoseparameters reclosed, n whichalgorithmsorproblem olutionarepredetermined,as partof the task structuretself.The work of Scribnerand Colewarnsus against he fallacyof regardingchool-like learning asksas requiringgreatercapacityfor higherorderthinkingthan doeveryday asks in home, community,and work settings.Schoolsmay fosterstu-dent'sabilitiesto recognizecanonicalforms of task solutionandto communicatetheirinsightabouthow to do such tasksin canonicalforms of speaking,writing,and calculatingwith numbers.This point was underscored n the presidentialaddressdeliveredbyRichardAndersonat the 1984annualmeetingof theAmericanEducationalResearchAssociation.In that talk Anderson identified featuresoflowerorderthinkingin earlygradesreading nstructionand achievement esting531



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FREDERICKRICKSONthatmitigateagainstacquisitionof morecomplexreading kills n the latergrades.Lowerorder hinkingand the abilityto applyalgorithmsuncriticallys whatearlygradesachievementtests measure. Schools appearto be quite good at teachingthosesituation-specificanonicalpractices.But that is not reasoning,morebroadlyand morefundamentally onstrued.Another allacy his line of workwarnsusagainst s that of interpretingulturallypatterned ommunicativeperformance ncritically, s evidenceof the presenceorabsenceof underlying ognitivecompetence see the discussion n Cole & Bruner,1971). An example of this is the fallacyof attributingmetacognitiveability tostudentswho have learned o talk in school-likewaysabout the reasonsfor theirchoices in experimentaltasks and attributing ack of metacognitiveability tostudentswho do not talkin school-likeways.Thisfallacycan be foundin the workof currentPiagetians e.g.,Flavell,1977)and the studentsof referential ommuni-cationin laboratoryasks(e.g.,Asher, 1976;Glucksberg,Krauss,& Higgins,1975;Markman,1979). Sociolinguisticresearchon the cognitive complexityof BlackEnglish, orexample,shows that nonstandardwaysof speaking haton firstglancemay seem to indicate lower order thinking,especiallythe lack of capacityforabstraction nd logicalreasoning,are in fact waysof speaking hat convey higherorder thinking (see especially Erickson, 1984; Labov, 1972). The problem ofcognitivecompetence-the abilityto recognizeand use higherorderthinking-may lie morein the eye or earand brain of the interpreterhan in the mouthandbrainof the speakerof a culturallynonstandardwayof speaking.Thisis a problemof ethnocentricbias in the study of relations betweenlanguageand thought,aproblemof which much educationalresearchon students'reasoning eems to beunaware.

Learning Tasks as Social EnvironmentsScribner nd Cole'sfindingsand Cole's earlierwork(Cole,Gay,Glick,&Sharp,1971) emphasize he culture-specific ndsituation-specific atureof learning asksinside and outside school. Their work emphasizesas well the importanceof thephysical orm of the objectsorsymbolsby whichthe task is presented.Thissurfaceformprovidescues to the schooledtest subjectaboutwhatresponses o makeandabout what to comment on when explainingone's reasoning.Scribnerand Cole'sfindingsalso point to the importanceof anotherdimension of the learning ask:that of social relationsbetween the tester and the tested, or the teacher and thestudent.Thisis the othertaskdimension hat was mentionedearlier n theexampleof makingchangeat the grocery tore.Recent researchon everyday hinkingshedsfurther ighton the importanceofthe dimensionof social relations n learning asks that ordinarilywe think of asexclusively cognitive nd abstracted rom social context. Lave,Murtaugh,andde la Rocha(1984)havebeeninvestigating rithmetic easoning f Americanadultswhileshopping n the supermarket. heyfind thattheadults, rom a widerangeofschoolingbackgrounds, re able to makepricecomparisonshat arevirtually rror-free when shopping.Given the same kinds of choice problems n a test situation,however,all their subjectsmade many errors.The more highly schooled madefewererrors hanthe less schooled,but all subjectsmademore errorsof choice inthe test than in the store. Does this suggestseriousflawsin schooledAmericans'capacities or abstract easoning?Far fromit, in the authors' nterpretation.Lave et al. (1984) see the crucialdifferencebetweenthe shopping ask and thetest task as lying not on the dimension of abstraction-concretenessut on the532



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEdimension of problem-definition by self or by other. This is a matter of socialrelations. In the grocery store price comparison occurs near the end of a longsequence of choice points that involve many factors besides price, for example, thesize and shape of one's shelf space, taste preferences of family members, menuplans for the week. The nature of the price comparison problem-its definition, itsrelevance to the ultimate decision to buy-is in the hands of the shopper. Shoppersare very good at shaping the problems-the points of quantitative comparison-inways that they can solve. In the test situation, however, the problem's quantitativeparameters are established by the tester. According to Lave et al. it is not just thatsuch a problem is out of context ; it is that it is in a context in which the powerrelations 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 beimportant in reading as well as in arithmetic. In a participant observational studyof reading practices of employees in a milk plant, for example, Scribner (1984) andJacob (in press) found that workers who tested as very limited in reading abilitydeveloped effective means of reading work orders. They used noncanonical waysof redefining the reading tasks so that they could accomplish them successfully. Ifthe workers had been forced to use canonical, school-like ways of decipheringwritten text they would have been unable to do their job in the plant, because theyhad not mastered the canonical form of the practice of reading. This is not to saythat their noncanonical reading practices were less reasonable than those taught byschools. The workers' practices were reasonable-just according to a differentsystem of reasons. Since the social organization of their work entailed the right toread the way they knew how, they were able to display competence that otherwisewould not have been displayed.Recent work by Rogoff and Gardner (1984) sheds further light on the issue ofsocial relations as inherent in the constitution of learning tasks. They have beenstudying mothers teaching classification tasks to children in everyday teachingsituations. One such task is arrangingitems purchased at the grocery store. Mothersand children were observed doing this task in a laboratory kitchen. The kind ofinstruction provided by the mothers is what Wertsch (1979) has characterized asproleptic instruction; the novice carries out simple aspects of a task under theguidance of an expert, who can demonstrate performance to the novice. Thebalance between observation and guided trial attempts on the part of the learner isestablished by mutual negotiation-learner seeking help and teacher providing it.This negotiation establishes the fluid, interactional system of social and cognitivesupport that Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) call scaffolding. The scaffolding is amatter of social relations as well as of subject matter content. In the everydayteaching scenes that Rogoff and Gardner have been observing, the scaffoldingrelationship between teacher and learner is jointly constructed. The child has rightsto ask for a range of kinds of help. Like the grocery shopper, the child and theteacher have rights to redefine the task as part of the scaffolding negotiation. Thissocial form of learning environment in everyday teaching situations is very differentfrom that found in school learning environments. There, typically, the learner hasmuch less right to help shape the task. In such a situation it may be that very oftenthe teacher's one-sided attempts to construct a scaffold that reaches the learnerdon't work. The scaffold doesn't reach.With the influence of various performance accountability systems, schools areincreasingly places in which one individual (the teacher) sets absolute task param-eters for others. Practice in such situations of performance no doubt improves533



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FREDERICKRICKSONstudentperformance n standardized ests. It does not improveoverallreasoningability,if Cole is rightaboutthe domain-specific haracterof reasoningas sets ofpractices.Moreover,school-liketask constructionmay do violenceto civility, inthe sense of a social contract hatinvolvesassentby the learner.In the most extreme forms of school learningenvironments,not only does thelearnerhave no rights o shapethe learning ask,but neitherdoes the teacher.Thetest is the most extremeexampleof this. In observing xperiencedeachersadmin-isteringstandardized estsI havebeen repeatedlympressedby their frustration tnotbeingableto explainsimpleconfusions heirstudentsmayhaveaboutparticularitems. The test as a social situationhas removed he teacher's ight o scaffold-toteach.Repeatedlyeacherswillattempt o break hrough his,not to cheaton behalfof the student,but to prevent the child from makingwhat for that child is anonvalidwronganswer-the child'sreasoning s on the righttrack,it'sjust thatthe child is havingtrouble reading he task cues of the item. Children epeatedlyseek such help. Again, it seems not simplyto cheat but to do with the problemwhatthey would do in ordinaryproblemsolvingat the groceryor in an everydayteaching ituation, n whichscaffoldingsjointlyconstructed o thatit fits both thetask and the learnerattempting he task;so thatin Vygotsky's ermsit bridges hezone of proximal development Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 84-91). Mehan (1973) hasshown how professionalest administratorsnd children ointly negotiateanswersin individualtest situations.This presstowardscaffoldingworkby both teacherandstudentseemsubiquitous.Another nstance of a teachingsituation n which the social rulespreventbothteacherandstudent romscaffoldingnegotiations thescriptedesson.Theteacher'smanualaccompanying he basalreadingbook scriptsthe lesson partially.Somespecialremedial nstructionfor low performing tudents is entirelyscripted,forexample, he DISTARcurriculum eveloped orearlygrades tudents rom mpov-erished amilies,oftenof racialor linguisticminoritybackground.n theselessonsthe teacher'squestions,and the student'schoral responses,are mandatedby ascript.Neitherthe teachernor the studenthas the rightto reformulate he contentof the questionsand answers,or to reformulate he sequencein which they areasked,or the behavioral tyle of the question-answeroutines(loud voice, hyper-correctpronunciation).If social relations are an inherent dimension of learning tasks, and if therelationship f rightsandobligationsbetween eacherandlearnerdoesnot includethe rightof bothparties o engage n mutualscaffolding onstruction,we must askwhatopportunities uch school learningenvironments ouldprovideas situationsfor the acquisitionof reasoningskills. In addition,we must ask whethersuchenvironmentscan possiblybe arenas for the enactment of civility, or whethercivility-mutual commitment to participation n society, beyond the self-isimpossible in such circumstances.It would seem that such environments areinimical to civility and that student disruptionand resistance o learningandteacher rustration nd burnout rereasonable esponses o a workenvironmentthatis unreasonably ontrolledby external nfluences.Ways of Speaking and Teacher-Student Interaction

Perspectives From Sociolinguistic ResearchWe have identifieda factor that may limit students'acquisitionof literacyandreasoning kills andthatmayvitiatecivilityin the school. This factor s not a fault534



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEof individualchildrenorteachers. t is an aspectof socialorganizationn schools-constraintson learnerchoice in task definitionand on the abilityof teachersandstudents o constructcognitivescaffolding ogetheras theywork on learning asks.Some constraints ome from outside heclassroom: romadministrativeegulationsand standardoperatingprocedures ndfrom thedesigners f curriculummaterials.Other constraintscome from within the room: from teachers'(and children's)culturally earnedassumptionsabout the properconduct of school teachingandlearning.Anotherfactorhas been identifiedby recentsociolinguistic esearch s a signifi-cant source of frictionin classroomsand as an influence towardmisjudgmentofstudentperformanceand motivationby teachers.That factor is the attributionsthataremadeabout otherson the basisof the language ormtheyuse in speaking.Interest n this issue has been central n sociolinguistics, n interdisciplinaryieldthatlinksanthropology, ociology,socialpsychology,andlinguistics.Sociolinguistshave been concernedwith what happensin social interactionand in perceptionwhen one or more personsuse culturallypatternedways of speaking hat do notmatchthe culturalexpectationsof the otherswith whomtheyareinteracting.Thisissuehasbeeninvestigatedn Americanclassroomsn studiesof culturaldifferenceand culturalsimilaritybetweenteachersand the students heyteach.Michaels and Collins (1984), for example, found that when working classAmericanblackchildren old narrative ccounts n earlygradesclassroomdiscus-sion the form the narrativesook differedfrom the culturally tandardnarrativeform usedby middle classwhite childrenand white teachers.The standard ormresembledwrittennarrative,withan initialframing tatementof the point o bemade by the anecdote,followedby the storyitself,whichwas thus framedas aninstanceof the moregeneralpointthat was made.Within henarrative, eyfeaturesof informationwerehighlightedn culture-specificways,grammatically nd withvoice tone.When the working class black children told narratives hey used culturallynonstandardnarrative tructureand nonstandardgrammaticaland intonationalways of markingemphasisat key points in the story.As they told storiesin thiswaytheywerecontinually nterrupted y the teachers.Closeanalysisof transcriptsof the classroomdialoguerevealed hat the teachersnterruptedhe blackchildren'sstoriespreciselyatthosepointsat whichthespeech ormdiffered romtheculturallymainstream ormof doingoral narrationn wayssimilar o writtennarration.Theteacherskepttryingto repairpoints in the children'snarratives, t whichnothinghadgone wrong,according o the culturalconventionsof workingclass black oraldiscourse.The teachersapparentlydid not knowhow to read he children's alkas intelligible ndcoherent.This led to inappropriatettemptsat scaffolding ytheteacher,who apparently aw the child narratoras confusedand/or inarticulate.The result repeatedlywas frustrationon the part of both teacher and child. Anumber of other researchershave found similar patternsof apparentculturalinterferencedue to differences n waysof speakingand listening e.g., DeStefano,Pepinsky,& Sanders,1982; Eder, 1982; Erickson, 1979;see also the volume ofrelatively arlyworkalongtheselines; Cazden,Hymes,&John, 1972).Language ormand discoursepatternsarenot the only aspectsof speakingandlistening hatcan leadto misperception f studentsbyteachers.Culturaldifferencesin assumptionsof appropriatenessn conversational urn-takingcan also be asourceof misperceptionhat leads to trouble n the classroom.Gomes (1979), forexample,reports hat a kindergarteneachermisdiagnoseda CapeVerdeanchild535



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FREDERICKRICKSONas potentially motionallydisturbedafter3 weeksof school,partlyon the groundsthatthe child had been continually interrupting er and other children.Behav-iorally,the child had been speakingbeforeother persons' urnsat speakinghadbeen completed. That was what people did in the child's home. The teacherinterpretedhe child'sculture-specificway of speakingas evidenceof the child'semotional state. From the teacher'spoint of view that judgment made perfectsense. It was based,nonetheless,on misperceptionof the meaningof the child'sactions,from the child's culturalpointof view.This line of workmightseemto be claiminga simple,culturaldeterministviewof teacher-studentonflictand of academicfailureby culturalminoritychildren.That is not the case. Culturaldifference eems not only to be a source of conflictin socialinteraction;t can also be seen as a resultof conflict.Socialpsychologists(e.g., Giles & Powesland,1975) have found that in situationsof experimentallyinducedconflictand negativeaffect, individualswho speakdifferentdialectswillspeak progressivelymore broadforms of that dialectas interactionproceedsandconflictescalates.Theseexperimentaldatatracea processof increaseddifferentia-tion-what Bateson(1972, pp. 61-72) calls schismogenesis-acrossa shortspaceof time. In a naturalistic tudy,Labov(1963-1972) has found a similarphenome-non occurringovera longerterm. He findsthat over a 20-yearperiod,featuresofthe dialect spoken by natives of Martha'sVineyardhave become increasinglydifferent romthe standardEnglish pokenby uppermiddle class summer ourists.Labov interprets his as an instance of culturechange as a symbol of politicalresistancen a situationof intergroup onflict. The islandersaredependenton thetouristsas a sourceof income,but resent hesituationof dependence,and manifestthatby speaking n waysthatarebecomingmore and more distinctfrom those ofthe tourists.Inan earlygradesclassroom tudy,Piestrup 1973)founda similarphenomenonoccurring n teacher-studentnteractionacross a single school year. Working nrecentlydesegregatedchools,sheaudiotaped lassroomdialoguebetweenworkingclass black studentsand their teachers.Some of the teacherswere white;otherswere black. If over the course of the year the teacher reactednegatively o thechild's nonstandard peech and continuallyattemptedto get the child to speakmore correctly, he dialect features n the child'sspeechbecame broaderas theyear progressed. f the teacherdid not reactnegatively o the child'sspeechat thebeginningof the year, by the end of the yearthe dialect features n the child'sspeechhad become essmarked.The child wasspeakingmore ike standardEnglish,apparently s a resultof learning hrough hemodelingof the teacherand theuppermiddleclasswhite children n the room. Thispatternheld whether he teacherwaswhite or black.It seems that what Piestrup ound was a processof culturalschismogenesis, ritsabsence,dependingon the situationof micropolitics f culturaldifferencen theclassroom.When the teachermade the child's ways of speakinga groundsforconflict,the childjoined in the conflictby becomingprogressivelymoredifferentfromthe teacher n interactional tyle.Apparently,n sucha situationof conflictthe child wasrefusing o learnfromthe modeling hat waspresent n the scene andwas also refusing o learn from direct nstructionby the teacher.When the teacherdid not make culturedifferencea groundfor conflict, the child adapted n thedirectionof the normative tyle.The classroomsPiestrupdescribedcan be seen as representing ifferentcivilityconditions. In the former classroomsthe children resisted commitment to a536



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEnormative orderand manifestedthat linguistically. n the latterclassroomsthechildrenmanifestedcommitment to the normativeorder.Thosewereclassroomsin which the teacherdid not attempt o coercecommitment.

Culturaldifference, hen,seemsto be entailed nthepoliticsof intergroupontactandin themicropolitics f interactionn face-to-face ncounters. nsomesituationsculture differencecan interferewith people'sability to work together.In othersituations ulturedifferencedoesnot seemto interferewithsuccessful ooperation,even thoughthe interactionalpartnersmay haveto work a bit harderat it than iftheywere not culturallydifferent.Piestrup's ntriguing indings rom classroomsareborneout in the experimentalresearchof Giles and Powesland 1975) and in the naturalisticworkreported nEricksonand Shultz(1982). In these studiesof two-person onversations, ulturaldifferencewaxedand wanedin its salience,dependingon the micropoliticsof thesituation. Moreover,as culturalstyle difference became more marked,greaterinteractional ifficultyoccurred, ndthiscovariedwithnegativepersonperception.It would seem that culturedifferenceplaysa dual role in interactionalrouble.Culture difference tself can lead to interactional rouble (lack of intelligibility,misunderstanding), hich then may or may not becomegrounds or conflictthatsustainsand escalates.If the conflict is not sustained,even major interactionaldifficultiesdue to culture differencecan be sidestepped,and cooperationcan bemaintained.However, f the conflict s sustained, he conflict tselfapparentlyeedsbackon the culturaldifference,beginninga cycle of schismogenesis.On the otherhand,in a situation n which conflictsexist at the outset,verysmalldifferencesnculturalstyle (e.g., dialect, dress),which on the face of it should not preventcooperation,can be used in interactionas resources or conflict.In otherwords,when people consciouslyor unconsciouslygo looking for troublein interaction,theycan find reasons or conflictin culturaldifference.Sociolinguistic esearchhussuggests hatculturaldifferencen waysof speakingand listening s an important actor n the acquisitionof literacyand reasoning nschools and in the creationand maintenanceof conditionsof civilityin the schoolsocialsystem.Culturaldifferencedoes not simplycause conflict betweenteachersand students-interactional trouble that inhibits student learning.But culturaldifferencecan contributeto alreadyexistinggroundsfor conflict. It can lead tomomentary truggleshatundersome conditionscandevelop nto sustainedbattles,and under other conditionscan not only not make for further rouble,but canserveas a positiveresource n teaching.Literacy and the Politics of Social Identity: Achieving School Failure

In reviewing he possibleroles of culturedifference n classroom eachingandlearningwe discussed he micropolitics f face-to-face nteraction.Socialtheoryofmacropolitical rocessesprovidesyet anotherperspective n the Americanpatternof low school achievement n the use of canonical iteracyand reasoningpracticesby childrenof workingclass and minoritybackground.Resistancetheoryexplainsthe puzzlingly ow school performanceof studentswho in the literacies f practicalreasoning n everyday ife displayimpressivecompetence.Resistancetheoryis a subset of reproduction heory,a criticalper-spectiveon the role of schools n societyas perpetuatinglassdistinctions romonegenerationto the next. Bourdieu and Passeron(1977), for example, arguethatdefinitionof publicschool learning asks in the normative erms of uppermiddle

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FREDERICKERICKSONclass and upperclass elite culturalknowledge written iteracyas essay-likeprose,reasoningas academic-likeogical rigor)serves o put studentsof non-elitefamilybackground t a disadvantagewhen competingwith elite students. Elite culturalknowledgeand elite socialstandingarethus reproducedromgeneration o gener-ationby the unfairadvantage hat elite studentsbringto school:the possessionofcultural apital.Resistance heorypoints out that non-elite studentscooperate n this situationof unfair competition by disadvantaginghemselvesstill furtherby refusingtolearn. Failureto learnsimple tasks of literacyand numeracy, rom this point ofview, is seen not as evidence of innate disability n the student,but as politicalresistance. n self-defeating ttempts o fightbackthe studentresistsbeingdefinedbythe school as a personof less worththan others.The child'sdefianceprovidesamore acceptableself-imagethan does agreementwith the school's definition.Whether overtorovert,wittingorunwitting, his resistances unsuccessful ecauseit can be redefinedby the schoolsystemeitheras evidenceof stupidityand/or lowmotivation n the learneror as evidenceof culpablerecalcitrance-the markof theunrepentent innerwho deserves everepunishment.Reproduction heoryand its constituent,resistance heory,view as a shamtheostensiblybenign ideologyof equalityof educationalopportunity,withthe schoolas a rational,formalorganizationwhose manifestaims are to deliver its servicesunder conditionsof maximumfairness.On the contrary, t is argued, he schoolsetsup the non-elitechildfor failureby defining earning asks n the wayit does.The argumentof reproduction heory is persuasivebut flawed.Reproductiontheoryexplains he seemingcontradiction hat childrenwho show abilitiesoutsideschool that they don't inside school must not simply be stupidor lazy. But theargument s a bit too pat. It presumesmechanistic, top-down elationsof causeand effectbetween he macrosocialorder-social classesand their nherent onflict,institutionsand their inherentcontradictionsbetweenmanifestand latent aims-and the micro socialorderof face-to-face elations n classrooms. t is an overde-terminedsocialtheorythat deniesanyautonomousreality o social life andchoiceat the level of everydayconduct of life-in this case, the level of everyday ife inclassrooms.Ostensiblybelonging o the stream of neo-Marxist riticaltheory,anoverdrawn eproductionheoryhas allthe weaknesses f vulgarMarxism. t deniesany realityto social and cognitivechoice at the level of the individual.We haveseenempiricalevidenceof such choicein the currentresearchn cognitiveanthro-pology,cross-cultural sychology,andsociolinguisticshat hasbeenreviewedhere,andwehave seen theimportance f such choicemakingbylearners ndbyteachersin the interactionalconstructionof learningenvironments hat fosteror inhibitstudent earning.Resistance heorylacks some of the flaws of its parent,reproductionheory.Itgrantsrealityto social organizationat the level of face-to-face elationsand thusavoidsthe reductionism f reproductionheory.Ina sympathetic etcritical eview,Giroux (1983) takes resistancetheory to task for fallacies of loose thinking,especially orthefallacyof overgeneralization. very nstanceof studentmisbehav-ior-scrawled writingon anassignment,ailure o completeanassignment,ighting,takingdrugs,absenteeism-cannot be interpretedas evidenceof resistance.Theanalysisof resistanceas a phenomenonmust be morejudiciousto be persuasive,Giroux argues.Still, resistancetheory is attractivebecause it can account forlinkagesbetweenmacrosocialand microsocialprocesseswithout reducingeitherlevel to the other. Resistance heory,despiteits limitations, s powerfully xplana-538



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEtory. It accountsmore comprehensively nd realistically or the phenomenonofmassiveschool failureamong the poor than does classical liberal social theory,whose naive view of schoolingas an unmixed blessingfor those deservingpoorwho arewillingto takeadvantageof the opportunities iventhemignoresunpleas-ant factsof life in urban and rural schools with predominantlyow SESstudentpopulations.Resistance heory, udiciouslyconstrued,also avoidsthe problemofcrudedeterminism oundin reproductionheory.Thepointis not to assignblamefor socialpathology, dentifying ither heschooland capitalistAmericaas victimizerof innocentyouth or the low achievingchildas a defective incorrigiblewho deserves the judgment of failure that he or shereceives.Whatis needed s a validanalysisof the pathology;moreover,we need ananalysisof presentconditionsof illnessthatmightpointbeyond tselfto conditionsof health. Resistance theory provides part of what is needed on the way todiscovering ome answersby allowingus to look at what is happening n schoolswithoutblaminga victim or castigating victimizer.The view is at once pessimisticandaffirming. t proposes hat children ailing nschool areworkingat achieving hat failure.The view does not wash its hands ofthe problemat that point. It maintains, however,that intervention o break thecycle of school failuremust startby locatingthe problem ointly in the processesof societyat largeand in the interactionsof specific ndividuals. t is the frontlinedeliverersof educational servicesand their clients, that is, teachers(and otherbuilding-level taff)and students,who worktogether o achieve the school failurethat is attributed o the studentalone by the conventionalwisdomof professionaleducatorsand of the lay public.Studentalienation romlearninghas been most obviousat the highschoollevel,anda numberof studieshave documented t. In an interesting asestudythat wasdone before the advent of resistancetheory, Cusick (1973) describedstudentalienation rom academicwork n an urbanhiglh chool. He traced hedailyroundsof small sets of studentswhowere friends.Cusickshowsthe studentsasremarkablyadeptat avoidingacademic earningacrossthe schoolday. Theycertainly eemedto be workingactivelyat achievingschool failure.Studentresistancehas been described n high schools that differconsiderablyfrom the typicalAmericanones. Willis (1977) has writtena reportof academicalienationamongBritishworkingclasshighschoolyouth.Thatstudyhasbecomea modernclassic.His researchwasdone fromthe explicitperspective f resistancetheory,which hasdevelopedmainlythrough he workof British cholars n the so-called new sociology of education (see Young & Whitty, 1977). Scollon andScollon(1981)examinethe issueof dramaticunderachievementn written iteracyby Alaskannativesin ruralareas.The Scollonstakea sociolinguistic nd anthro-pologicalperspective. n theirinterpretation,Alaskannativeteenagers ometo seethe acquisitionof Westernwritten iteracyas a kind of metaphoricadoptionof anew ethnic group identity. To become literate in school terms would be todisaffiliatesymbolicallyfrom their parentsand other membersof the Alaskannativevillage,a fewof whomare literate n traditionalknowledgeandskill,suchas that involvedin hunting,and many of whom aremarginallyiterate n school-likepracticesof literacy.Caught n ambivalencebetweenmultipleculturalworlds,Alaskannativeyouthresistadopting hecompletesystemof school-definediteracy,andthensuffer he consequencesof marginalacquisition.Theydo not belongfullyto the old waysor to the new.Resistanceas an explanation or school failurehas been most obviousand has

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FREDERICKRICKSONseemed most plausible when applied to high school students. This may be partlydue to the nature of the comprehensive high school curriculum, with explicittracking and various options for student choice within tracks-options that studentscan take that disadvantage them further by the absence of challenge in the courseschosen. Current attention to student resistance in high school may also be due tothe salience of adolescent acting out and authority testing, which is seen as part ofa natural developmental process: identity formation on the way to adulthood.

Relatively little emphasis has been placed on resistance as an explanation foracademic difficulties of children in the early grades. Children at that age, it isassumed, are not needing to distance themselves from adults the way teenagers do.Indeed, child development theory would suggest that the early grades studentidentifies with the teacher as a parent surrogate.One notable exception to the lack of studies of student resistance at the gradeschool level is the work of McDermott (1974, 1977). In detailed microanalysis ofvideotapes of instruction in reading groups, McDermott shows ways in whichstudents in the bottom reading group work actively at not reading. The teacher,apparently unwittingly, cooperates with this. The analysis shows how, in theinteractional tug of war that happens daily in the bottom reading group, thechildren in that group get much less reading instruction than do the children in thetop group. But the children themselves help create that situation. It is not simply amatter of ethnic or racial bias on the teacher's part; the students are refusing tolearn simple cognitive skills apparently as a form of micropolitical resistance.This line of empirical and theoretical work suggests that we need to move beyondsimple, single-factor explanations of school failure in literacy and reasoning and inthe breakdown of the social contract of civility in schools. Explanations that locatethe 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 andempirical work that accounts for and describes the macro- and micropoliticaleconomy of the social and cultural organization of the teaching and learning ofschool literacy and reasoning practices. If we came to better understand theprocesses by which the unequal distribution of knowledge and skill in our societyis produced (see Mehan, 1979) we would be doing more adequate social research.We would also be providing information on which to base policies that mighttranscend the partial attempts at amelioration of the recent past-efforts whichwere well intentioned but which in retrospect seem to have been misdirected. Thereseems at this point to be no quick fix, no single-factor amelioration for what appearto be mutually constituted sets of systemic problems across multiple levels of socialstructure.Two Modest Success Stories and Some Questions About Them

It would be wrong to conclude with the previous paragraph.At best it ended ona bleak note. At worst, the previous discussion may have seemed to suggest thatlarge-scale social change is the only way to better the educational chances of non-elite students. That may be true, but it is probably simplistic. In this final sectionwe will consider two cases in which something less than societal transformationseemed to make a difference in the school performance of typically low-performingstudents. The cases involve changes in everyday practices at the levels of the schooland classroom. While educational reform may well need to go beyond those levels,540



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEit may be instructive o considersome changes hat principalsandteacherscouldmake within the existingschoolsystem.

A Case ofAlaskan Native ChildrenBarnhardt1982) reportsa studyof an AlaskanAthabaskan ativevillageschoolin which the studentsdid much betteracademically han did theirtypicalnativevillageschoolcounterparts, s indicatedby end of the yearscoreson standardizedtests, which, in the presentmood of concern for educationalproductivity rethebasic currencyof school administrators.I do not mean to arguehere for thevalidityof this ubiquitouscriterionof productivity,but in this case andin the onethatfollows,the test scoresdo showcleardifferences romthe usualpatternof lowachievementby non-elite,culturalminoritystudents.)The villageschool had threeclassrooms,grades1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. Eachof thethreeteachers n the school wasnativeAlaskan,andeachwas a lifelongresidentofthe village.The curriculumwas in English.It was the standard urriculumman-datedby the state.Apparently, verything n the school was culturallymainstream xcept for thepatternof socialrelations he teachersusedin delivering nstruction.The teachersused meansof exercising ocial control thatwere moreindirect hanthoseusuallyemployedby nonnativeteachers.These werepatternsof indirection-ways of notputting ndividualchildrenon the spot-that havebeen identifiedamongvariousNativeAmericangroups n studiesof childrearingand of home-schoolexperience(seeespeciallyErickson& Mohatt, 1982;Philips,1972, 1982).In short, hecontentof instructionwas standard,but the processof instructionwas nonstandard nsubtleways.School instructionwas congruentwith patternsof socialrelationshipfoundin home andcommunity ife in the village.Indirect ocial controlby the teachersprovidedopportunitiesorthe children omake some choices that a more usual way of teaching might not have madeavailable.There wereopportunities o redefine earning asks,as well as opportu-nities for self-pacingand for practice n privateuntil masteryhad been achieved.Theseopportunities orchoice seem especiallysignificant n lightof our previousdiscussionof psychologicalresearchon the importanceof a social relationshipbetween teacher and student that allows each some leewayfor negotiation-nottoo much,but not too littleeither. The leewayseemsto haveenabled he teachersandstudents o workout a form of proleptic nstruction.In these classroomstaught by unusuallyeffectiveNative Americanteachers,students were held accountablefor doing standardacademicwork. The socialorganizationalmeansby whichthey accomplishedhat workdiffered lightly romthe standard means more usually found in American classrooms.That thesedifferenceswere relativelysmall in amount does not mean that they were notsignificant n kind. Indeed,our earlierdiscussionof literacyactivitiesas practicesemphasized he importanceof culture-specific atterns n the social relationshipsinvolved n tasks.According o thatview,when one haschanged lightly he natureof the socialrelationshipbetweenteacherand learnerone haschanged undamen-tallythe natureof the academic ask.Cultural ongruence n schoollearning ask definition s one explanation or thehighachievementof thestudents n the Alaskan chool.A competing nterpretationis that since the teacherswerelifelongmembersof the small villagecommunitythey had much greaterlegitimacythan non-nativeteachers.They could hold

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FREDERICKERICKSONstudents accountablefor academicwork under conditions of civility, given thelegitimacyof theirauthority, rom the point of view of the childrenand of theirparents.Since I have alreadycriticizedculturaldeterministargumentsas inade-quate,andsince the competing nterpretations plausible, t maywell be that boththe culturalorganizationof instructionand the legitimacyof the instructorwereworking ogether.We still want from this case a clearernotion of what was goingon. We want to knowwhy fine tuningin socialrelationships, r legitimacyof theteacher,or both togethermighthave influenced he Native Americanstudents operform o well in thisparticular illageschool.

A Case of Hawaiian Native ChildrenAu and Mason(1981) reporta studyof culturally ongruentreading nstructionthat beginsto resolvesome of the questionsthat remainfrom the Alaskancase.Here the culturalfactor that seemed to make a differencewas the turn-takingorganizationof firstgrade readinggroupconversationsabout stories n the basalreader.Workingclass Hawaiian nativesbelongto a speech communityin which it iscustomary o tell anecdotesanddiscuss hem in smallgroupsof speakerswho talkwhile others are talking. Such simultaneousspeakingis not seen as impoliteinterruption, ut ascomfortable ngagement ndas evidenceof intereston thepartof the participantsn the conversation.The ubiquityof this pattern or the socialorganizationof conversationalparticipationwas establishedby anthropological

fieldworksee Watson-Gegeo& Boggs,1977).The name for suchspeecheventsinthe community s talkstory.Au and Mason(1981) report hat whenreading torydiscussionwasconductedwith theoverlapping urn-taking atterns haracteristicf talkstory,children pokemorecoherentlyand learnedmore thantheydid whenthe lessonswereconductedin a one-speaker-at-a-timeattern.The latterwayof organizing roupconversationis characteristic f school-likeways of speaking.The formerway of organizing,allowingmultiplespeakers,s characteristicf community-like peech.As in the Alaskancase,the teachers n Hawaiidevelopeda mixed cultural orm.Conversationn the reading esson wasnot nearlyso overlapping mongspeakersas it was in talk-story ventsin the community.But the teachersallowedchildrento move slightlyin the directionof overlappingand co-narration.The teacherssteered he discussionstrongly,and in doingso gave higherordercomprehensioninstruction.In exchangefor that capacityto controltopic, it seems, the teacherswereallowingstudents o converse n waysthatwere familiarand comfortable othem. Au and Mason characterize his trade-offas a balanceof rights betweenleadership ndfollowership.t maybe that this balanceof rightsprovides he socialorganizationaleeway for teacher and students to constructproleptic,mutuallyaccommodating nstruction, n which interactioncould proceedby a mutuallyratifiable ocialcontract,and in consequence tudentresistancewas not set off bythe teacher'swayof teaching.Au and Mason'sstudyis of specialsignificancebecause t combinednaturalisticobservationand hypothesisgenerationwith experimentalhypothesis esting.Thetwo treatment conditions (talk story-like,and non talk story-likeconversationpatterns)were variedacrossa seriesof lessonsin whichthe readingdifficultywasheld constant. Tests administeredmmediatelyafter the lessons,as well as erroranalysisand other proximalindicatorsof children'sreadingachievementwithin542



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AN ANTHROPOLOGIST'SERSPECTIVEthe lessons hemselves, howed hat theHawaiiannativechildren learlyreadbetterwhen the socialorganization f lessoninteractionwasculturally ongruent.As in the Alaskancase,the socialorganization f lessoninteractionby itself wasprobablynot the only factor nfluencing he dramaticallymproved iteracyacqui-sition of the children. The reading nstructionreceivedwas only one part of aspecialprogramof curriculum ndpedagogydevelopedby the KamehamehaEarlyEducationProject n Honolulu.Itseemssignificant,however, hat wheneverythingin the classroomstayedthe same exceptthe patternof conversationalurn-takingin the reading esson, the readingachievementof the childrenwas clearlyhigherthan the culturally ongruent orm of socialorganizationn instruction.Whythis wasso is still not clear.We lack a theoryof pedagogy hat accounts orsocial cognition togetherwith cognition about what we usuallythink of as theacademic ubjectmattercontent(seeErickson,1982,for elaboration n thispoint).It maybe thatculturally ongruent nstruction implifies he task environment. nthe Hawaiiancaseif familiarconversationpatternsare used and the child does nothave to attendto those as well as to the content discussed,perhaps he child isenabled to devote more attention to the content of reading nstruction han thechild could in a situationof unfamiliarconversationalrules. But we can argueplausiblyalongother lines. It maybe thatculturally ongruent nstructiondepoli-ticizes culturaldifferencein the classroom,and that such depoliticizationhasimportantpositiveinfluenceson the teacher-studentelationship.Such a situationin the classroommightpreventthe emergenceof student resistanceand of inter-culturalschizmogenesis. n addition,macropolitical onflictmay well bear on themicropoliticsof classroom ife in wayswhosespecificswe do not yet understand.I have revieweda numberof new ways of thinkingabout academiclearningtasks.The work raisesmorequestions han it answers.At this point we still don'tknow whataspectsof culturalpatterningbearstronglyon proleptic nstruction ndscaffolding.The notions of prolepsis,scaffolding, earning asksas practices,cul-turallycongruent nstruction, esistance, nd the micropolitics f classroom ife areall emergentnotions in developingtheories.To continue new work along thesenew lines seems to be a good way to proceedin orderto deepenour theoreticaland practical understandingof schools as environments for learning literacy,reasoning,andcivility.To conclude,human learningas well as humanteachingneedsto be seen as asocial transaction,a collective enterprise.Society, culture,teacher,and studentinterpenetraten the definition and enactment of learningtasks. Much recenteducational esearch n school and teacher ffectiveness as takenanindividualisticview of learningand teaching.The curricular eformattemptsof the recentpastattempted o change he academiccontent of instructionwithout nstitutionalizingthe fundamentalchangesin social relations betweenteachers and students thatwould enablethe kindof learningenvironmentnecessary orteachinghigherordercognitionin schools.The currentpublicmood seems to be to constrain eacher-student nteraction till further, o try to improve performance y gettingtougheron teachersas well as on students.The lines of work reviewedhere arguefor adifferentapproachand for a differentdefinition of the problem.It may be thatteachersneed more control over theirways of teaching,not less. For classroomteachers o have more authorityas well as more responsibilitywould be a changein the allocationof power-social change in schools as institutionsand in thesocietythat maintains hose schools.From a socioculturalpoint of view, literacy,

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FREDERICKRICKSONreasoning, and civility as daily school practices cannot be associated and reorderedapart from the fabric of society in which those practices take place.ReferencesAsher,S. R. (1976).Children's bilityto appraiseheirown and anotherperson's ommuni-cationperformance.Developmental sychology,12, 24-32.Au, K. H., & Mason,J. (1981).Socialorganizationalactors n learning o read:The balanceof rightshypothesis.ReadingResearchQuarterly, 7(1), 115-152.Barnhardt,C. (1982). Tuning-in:Athabaskan eachers and Athabaskan tudents. In R.BarnhardtEd.),Cross-culturalssuesin AlaskaneducationVol. 2). Fairbanks: enter orCross-Culturaltudies,Universityof Alaska.Bateson,G. (1972). Stepsto an ecologyof mind. New York:BallantineBooks.Biehler,R. F. (1974).Psychology pplied o teaching.Boston:Houghton-Mifflin.Bourdieu,P., & Passeron,J. C. (1977). Reproduction:n education,societyand culture.

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FREDERICKRICKSONVanderZanden,J. W.,& Pace,A. J. (1984).Educational sychology:n theoryandpractice.New York:RandomHouse.Vygotsky,L. S. (1978). In M. Cole,V. J. Steiner,S. Scribner,& E. SoubermanEds.),Mind

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AUTHORFREDERICK ERICKSON, Professor of Education and Medicine, Room 207,Erickson Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. Specializa-tions. School ethnography, intercultural relations, anthropology of education.

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