Reply to comment

Listening to so many students share their earliest recollections with literacy learning has impressed me. The majority had experienced a form of literacy as a state of grace. These events mostly incorporated meaningful contact with words and involving a degree of emotional context to the words. I come from Malaysia with such a different educational system in which reading was not a culture and literature was somewhat unappreciated. Since English was taught at a very slow pace [the third language taught at school] and pronunciation was difficult for most of the students, we frequently practiced how to read. I remembered trying to distinguished the pronunciation of the word “lamp” and “lamb”. These extra English classes did not seemed exciting especially since they were held during the weekends and most of the students were reluctant to be there. However, the fact that the teacher was speaking English with a strong Indian accent made it worse. The grammar sessions and “skills” taught by the teacher were not very effective since it was pure lecture based. The teacher never allowed any students to speak or ask any questions.  This made it worse since there was no opportunity for fluency and creative expression. I view Delpit’s view of black teachers teachings similar to the Malaysian educational system. Despite the fact that skills are necessary for survival, it should be taught through meaningful communication, best learned in meaningful contexts.  Perhaps, one may view that literacy as power is a predominant aspect in countries whose official language may not be that influential such as Malay in my case. To be literate in English was always viewed as an advancement and opportunity for a better job and sometimes better future.