Category: Life

Introduction

Schooling has historically not considered the possible educative value of including native culture and languages and has instead emphasized integration into the mainstream, with the result that many cultural minority students may not be achieving the success they might otherwise achieve.  In many cases, their families have come to mistrust public school. Given this situation, this Chapter will critically review research studies that help to identify practices to help cultural minority students achieve while utilizing the resources of their home culture and language.

The Effect of Tracking and Stereotyping by Teachers

A study by Elhoweris et al. (2005) sought to find out if a child’s ethnicity affected whether or not his/her teacher would refer them for gifted and talented programs. Two hundred and seven teachers in a large Midwest school district were given a short vignette about a student who possessed gifted characteristics. Ninety two percent of the teachers were female, and 83% were white. One third of the vignettes revealed the student in question was white, another one third revealed the student was black, and one third gave no racial information as a control group. The teachers were randomly assigned to one of the 3 groups. The teachers were asked to decide if the student should be referred to a gifted and talented program. Ethnicity had a significant effect, (p!.05), on the teacher’s decision. Even though all the information about the student was exactly the same except for the ethnicity, the African American student was rated the lowest of the three groups.

This study (Elhoweris et al., 2005) is not as generalizable as it could be because it was conducted only in the Midwest. Racial attitudes vary around the country, and may actually be more severe in some places, and less severe in some places. I think also this could be applied to other minorities. It would be interesting to compare the rates for different minorities’ referrals, especially Asian students, who are typically assumed to be model students, even when they do not display the characteristics of such a student.

Hosp and Reschly (2004) investigated the connection of race and ethnicity to placement in special education programs, rather than the gifted and talented programs Elhoweris et al. (2005) looked at. Hosp and Reschly looked to discover what the predictors for the overrepresentation of minority students might be besides race, and so factored academic achievement in to the equation as well as demographic information (race and ethnicity) and economic information.

The researchers (Hosp & Reschly, 2004) looked at the rate of five different ethnic groups of students being assigned to special education, African American, Native American, Asian Pacific Islander (APA), Hispanic, and Caucasian.  Programs for students with mental retardation, emotional disturbance, and learning disabilities were analyzed. African American students were shown to be overrepresented in classes for the mentally retarded as well as programs for students who are emotionally disturbed. Native American’s were overrepresented in classes for the learning disabled. Less APA students are identified in all three categories than would be expected considering their percentage of the general population.  As Ruan (2003) found, teachers often overestimate the abilities of APA students due to stereotyping, which can disadvantage Asian students who do need the extra help but are not identified and given intervention. Hosp and Reschly (2004) also reported that African American, Hispanic, and Native American students do not make up a proportion of the students in gifted and talented programs that would be expected given their proportion of the general population.

For this study (Hosp & Reschly, 2004), data on the demographics of students enrolled in special education programs was collected. The ratio of the percentage students in programs for each of the three disability categories to the percentage of each ethnicity in the general population was compared to the same ratio for white students to figure out the relative risk ratio. Achievement statistics were gathered from school districts and their websites. Data that was compatible with the design came from only 16 states, but the researchers stressed that these 16 states represented all the major regions of the United States. For the study, “due to the large number of comparisons, an alpha level of p= .005 was used” (Hosp & Reschly, 2004, p. 190).

For each of the three groups, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and emotional disturbance, the variance for all the racial groups was 32.8 %, 24.4%, and 30.1% respectively (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). Economic factors were stronger in determining special education membership than race was, but in some ways it was found to correlate with race, so it is difficult to differentiate the causality coming from one or the other. The academic consideration was a strong influence for only 2 of 12 categories (categories consisted of percentage of students in special education in relation to the number in the general population of the school for each racial group compared to the ratio for white students, for each of the three special education types). The other ten categories, it “accounted for a significant amount of variance for six of the models… [but] for the remaining four models, the academic block did not contribute a significant amount of unique variance” (Hosp & Reschly, 2004, p. 192).

The findings report that for mental retardation special education classes, economic factors were the strongest influence out of economic, demographic, and academic achievement categories (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). The variance was .27 for African American students, .21 for Hispanics, .246 for APA, and .162 for Native American, p <.005. For emotional disturbance, race (demographic) was the most statistically significant influence (variance =.193 for African American students, .313 for Hispanic, .140 for APA, and .259 for Native American students, p<.005).

Academic performance most affected referral and membership in programs for the learning disabled (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). Results were an independent variance of .228 for African American, .031 for Hispanic, .137 for APA students, and .078 for Native Americans.

APA students had the strongest predictor as race in all three special education categories, while the majority of cultural minority students seemed to have significant influence from all three student identifiers (race, income, and achievement) (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). For all the racial groups, academic performance seemed to affect membership in the special education groups less than economics or race, but was slightly stronger in affecting placement in classes for mental retardation.

Racial demographics were stronger for African American and APA students than for Hispanic or Native American students (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). While the academic predictor was the weakest overall, it did contribute significantly to the placement of students in 8 of the 12 groups.

The study (Hosp & Reschly, 2004) eliminated small districts from the sample that only had a few minority students. This was because in a district with under a certain number of students of a specific ethnicity, officials are not allowed to report test scores to the public, because the pool of students is so small the confidentiality of reporting it is does not meet privacy standards. It is much easier to figure out who is who out of a group of 5 students than it is to identify one student out of 50 or even 500. This was necessary because they could not obtain the information, so thus there was no way the researchers could include it in the results. The study is thorough for the information attained, but since small districts could not publish the information, it is does not paint a complete picture.  Patterns of enrollment may be different in different types of districts.  It could be that in these rural districts with few minority children that there is even less culturally relevant teaching that provides a chance at success for these students.

A critique of the study is also addressed by the researchers (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). The fact that the research was done far removed from any individual student’s achievement makes it hard to identify exactly where students who should not be in special education are being enrolled in these classes. The researchers suggest that “research needs to be extended to the individual level” (p. 196). The fact that the individual students were not assessed by researchers seems problematic, because they could not assess student’s in the same way teachers could, they only looked at a few factors that may well be, unfortunately, associated with race. By not assessing any students themselves, we as readers cannot tell whether race or class alone, and not academic performance, was what drove the teachers to assign a student to special education classes.

To summarize, ethnicity has a negative effect on whether a teacher will refer a student to gifted and talented program, even when all other factors are the same (Elhoweris et al, 2005). Conversely, it has been shown that African American students are referred to classes for the emotionally disturbed more than white students, and low socioeconomic status was a strong factor in recommendation to classes for the mentally retarded(Hosp and Reschly, 2004).

The Effect of Class and Socioeconomic Status on Teaching and Learning Craig, Connor, and Washington (2003) found that African American students

from low income families who attended state funded preschools performed better in their oral language and cognitive skills by the time they reached third grade than middle class African Americans who did not attend these preschools. In the Detroit school the study was conducted in, seventy five percent of the students were African American. All subjects spoke African American English (AAE). Fifty students were involved in the study; 30 boys and 20 girls. Half were in kindergarten and half were in the preschool class. The middle class students who started in kindergarten did not attend preschool.

The researchers (Craig et al., 2003) pre-assessed the children for oral language and cognitive skills when they first arrived at the school, and conducted formative assessments along the way. The assessments were conducted by African American female examiners. These examiners spoke African American English with the students during the tests, which were audio recorded to check for reliability. Assessments used were subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children and samplings of students use of expressive language in describing pictures. Samples were scored by segmenting responses into communication units and analyzing them for complexity of syntax, diversity of vocabulary, and mean length of each unit. The computer program Computerized Language Analysis was used to evaluate the responses.

Students in preschool tested lower when they first started school, possibly because they were younger, and showed no significant improvements at the end of first grade (Craig et al., 2003). But by the end of third grade, the lower SES preschool students had surpassed the children who started in kindergarten and did not attend preschool in reading comprehension skills, the slope difference in the improvement between the groups was 6.68 (p<.001 ). The study found that coming from a family with low socioeconomic status affected a student’s reading acquisition less than an early diagnosis of reading difficulties. Students who had had their special needs addressed a year earlier were at a better place by the time they reached third grade regardless of their socioeconomic status than students who may have had these issues addressed a year later.

The study (Craig et al., 2003) concluded that with proper intervention, social class should not make a major difference in a student’s success. One critique of this study is the fact that students were tested upon their entry into school, the lower SES group a year earlier when they went into preschool. Comparing the students at different stages in their development may not make for accurate contrast of the two groups, since with age oral language develops, especially distinguishable in young people,. However, testing all students a year before kindergarten started, or testing all students at the inception of kindergarten and comparing them this way would be more accurate.

The majority of the literature used to teach reading has reflected predominantly Anglo Saxon Protestant characters and values. Often, when a minority is portrayed, they are a secondary character, they are stereotyped, or they are represented in skin color only and the character reflects white mainstream culture. This is reflected not only in trade books for children, but also in the textbooks used in schools (Harris, 2002).

Research has shown that students may be more engaged and comprehend more when they read literature that reflects their home culture. Reyhner (1986) cites information from the U.S. department of education claiming that “students read passages more deftly when the passages describe events, people, and places of which the students have some prior knowledge” (p. 14).

After the civil rights movement and the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s respectively, most literacy textbooks were reviewed for racist and sexist content, which led “to recommendations for change, such as printing readers in African American English” (Monaghan et al., 2002, p. 229)

In the past few decades, some improvements have been made in the published literature used in classrooms, but there is still a lack of consistently culturally relevant literature for use with students of color and with all students. Harris (2002) states that though multicultural literature is being used in schools and libraries in many ways “one overlooked site for inclusion is in series created for reading or language arts instruction”(pg. 372). Some teachers do not see the necessity of using multicultural literature with white students (Harris, 2002).

One reason for a struggle to use multicultural literature in classrooms is the fact that publishers are primarily concerned with turning a profit, and “many books categorized as multicultural sell less than 5,000 copies” (Harris, 2002, p. 369). Questions have also arisen as to whether literature with minority characters, but written by a white author, can be relevant or count as multicultural (Harris, 2002).

History of Heritage Language Development and its Use in Schooling

Some researchers and teachers have more recently found that helping children to develop their language abilities in their native language helps more with their acquisition of a new language more than an English only approach does (Kondo-Brown, 2002). It is also difficult for schooling to be effective when conducted in an unfamiliar language, as it takes an average of 5 to 7 years for a person to learn all the complexities of academic English, the language of schooling (Kondo-Brown, 2002). A person might be able to converse in English in under a year, but the foundation in the academic language needed for school, because it takes longer to master, may not be available to students until the upper grades. By then they may have missed many of the important foundations for this later study.

America has historically had a subtractive/ additive policy when it comes to language (Kondo-Brown, 2002). Schools attempted to transition students from their native language into English only, and then attempted to teach students a new language in foreign language classes. There is little attempt to maintain a student’s native language unless it is English. Often the family is the only resource to maintain bilingualism for minority language students. Adults who have come from minority language backgrounds have talked of their “reluctance to use their heritage language due to negative external reactions” ( Kondo-Brown, p. 221).

Because students do not understand the language, the only resource they have is a graphophonic cueing system.  Without the ability to understand the words they read, there is no way to use context, syntax, or semantics to understand what they are reading. Students who enter school with prior knowledge of Asian languages have also had problems in school, because of the need to transition between characters to an alphabetic system. These students have to learn the concept of graphophonics in a whole new way. (Kondo-Brown, 2002).

History of Differentiation in Schooling Based on Socioeconomic Status

In the 1960s, the U.S. government instituted a War on Poverty. This legislation wanted to help the poor get a better education, so that human resources were not being wasted. Head Start was established to give poor children equal footing as middle and upper class students upon entering kindergarten. The idea was to “attack the very social structure that caused poverty” (Spring, 2005, pg.390). Walter Heller was appointed to create a report on poverty, entitled “The Problem of Poverty in America”. This report claimed poverty and poor education were linked, blaming the workers for their low wages rather than the system that paid such low wages (Spring, 2005). The report states “it is difficult for children to find and follow avenues leading out of poverty in environments where education is deprecated and hope is smothered” (Spring, 2005, pg 391). Title I of the Educational Opportunities Act helped to “provide financial assistance… to expand and improve… educational programs by various means…which contribute particularly to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children.” (Spring, 2005, pg 392), while Title II provided monetary resources to school libraries and for textbooks.

Summary

To review, the history of American schooling has been one of attempting to create a unified culture. There have been attempts to bring students from diverse backgrounds together, but rather than creating an amalgamation of cultures, there have been attempts to bring minority cultures into the fold of Protestant Anglo Saxon values. Students may come to school with a specific feeling or attitude based on the history people in their culture have experienced in public schools in the past.

Examples of this effort to create a unified culture include attempts public schools have made in the past have Catholic students use Protestant books and reading materials to study from, leaving them little choice but to create private schools so their culture could be valued in schools.

African American students were not provided education in the countries early years, and many believe the inferior schooling provided in separate schools was a way to keep them uneducated and powerless. The attempt to eliminate Ebonics, which linguists view as a valid dialect, devalues African American culture and makes them feel unappreciated in schools.

Native American’s were taught English early on, but were able to use the alphabetic system to further their Native culture and language. When the attempt to Christianize Native Americans and bring them into the mainstream culture did not work, whites in power removed Indian children from their families and sent them to boarding schools where they were stripped of their language and culture. Many Native American’s still refer to public schooling as the White Man’s schooling, and have deep distrust of schools. Native American students continue to have a disproportionate representation in special education classes, as do with African American and Hispanic students.

Hispanic peoples, who have lived in the southwest since before Europeans landed on the east coast, were compelled to public schooling that devalued their language and attempted to transfer them to mainstream language and cultural practices. They continue to be subjected to so called subtractive schooling under No Child Left Behind, in which their native language skills are not respected and are not developed into further skills, but rather seen as something that needs to be transferred into mainstream language and culture.

Early Asian settlers were first not allowed to attend public schools, and then were relegated to separate schools. Now that schools are integrated, teachers often misjudge the abilities of Asian Pacific American students because of stereotyping and differences in communication styles between cultures, and many do not receive the assistance they need to succeed.

The materials used to teach in many American classrooms have not been culturally relevant, and continue to have flaws that keep minority students from seeing themselves represented in the materials of their classrooms. Since there has been little attempt to maintain native languages of students, this can also cause problems in reading acquisition because students cannot comprehend, even if they can decode, in a foreign language.

It is essential to keep in mind the experiences different cultural groups have had when assessing their success in school. Since some minorities, for example Native Americans, have had negative experiences with public schooling as a group, they may place a different amount of importance on success in schooling. Also, understanding what has happened in the past can help us see a big picture when looking at the current research, and give a broader context when attempting to find ways to help children from all cultural backgrounds succeed in a more and more diverse classroom. We can see from the past that the idea of a melting pot of American citizens has not left minorities in this country with an equitable education. We must start looking at our classrooms as a mosaic in which each piece is different, but all are equally important and valuable. The next Chapter will look at studies that have explored different methods used to enhance the reading development of children from many different cultural and class backgrounds.

During the nineteenth century, the Irish Catholics were despised by the Protestant majority for many reasons, including religion and job issues. They were treated hostilely in the schools, were required to read texts that were dominated by Protestant values and contained anti Catholic material, and were compelled to read from the Protestant Bible.

The Catholic community wanted changes in the curriculum, but the powerful Protestant culture ignored their complaints. The Catholics asked for money from the common school fund to fund their own schools, but they were turned down and as a community decided to fund private schools that accepted their culture. Because they were not willing to send their children to schools in which their culture and religion were devalued, Catholics were doubly taxed, first to pay for the common school fund through taxes, and secondly to pay for their own schools where another religion was not pushed on their children. Even into the 20^th century, “many Catholics would refer to public schools as Protestant schools” (Spring, 2005, p.108).

Education of African American Students

During times of slavery in the South, there was little formal attempt to teach slaves coming from Africa to speak English, though this of course happened eventually. Some learned to read and write, but in most cases this was done covertly. Slaves had to hide their attempts to learn to read, or their ability to read, from their masters or other whites. It was actually illegal to teach a slave to read. Many slaves were punished severely if it was found out that they had learned to read. At the start of the Civil War, about “5 percent of slaves had learned how to read” (Spring, 2005, p. 114). Abolitionist societies that worked to end slavery also worked to educate the slaves who had been freed.

In the late 1700s, communities in Massachusetts were required to provide grammar school to children. No law said black children could not attend, but many were unable to for economic reasons (they were needed at home to work and help provide for the family). The children who did go were mistreated in the schools by whites. Black parents, in order to protect their children, actually tried to get a separate (segregated) school system for their children. This dream was made a reality with the help of white philanthropists. By the 1820’s, African Americans realized that an inferior education was the consequence of segregation. Public schools created their own version of the segregated school on the premise that this school would be more equal to that of white children.  Abolitionist David Walker argued that “the inferior education blacks received in schools was designed to keep them at a low level of education” (Spring, 2005, p.113).

Until 1954, schools were segregated by race. Separate but equal conditions created schools that were not actually equally funded. They did, though, provide African American students with African American teachers who understood their needs and provided role models from their culture (Spring, 2005).

During the 1960s, the civil rights movement prompted a review of the existing reading texts for racist content (Monaghan et al., 2002). There were recommendations to print texts in African American English. There has been controversy in the professional community over the validity of Ebonics, or African American English (LeMoine, 2002). There are three different theories about the origins of this dialect. First, English-origin theorists propose that African American English is a natural dialect of English, and uses the same grammar structure as English. The second theory is that of the Creolists, who suggest that the origins of African American English come from the simplified languages used to communicate by enslaved persons in West Africa and the Caribbean (LeMoine, p. 167). Lastly, African- origin theories suggest that African American English is not a dialect of English at all, but rather derived from African languages from the Niger and Congo areas. African- origin theorists stipulate that the underlying grammatical structures of African American English are from these African languages, and not English. “…All three perspectives agree that Ebonics is governed by a system of linguistic rules (grammatical, syntactical, morphological, pragmatic, and semantic)…features” (LeMoine, 167), making it a valid language however one believes it developed.

African American English is a different dialect than the Standard English that is spoken in most American schools, and this can cause difficulties for students trying to traverse back and forth between their home and school dialects. Though there have been many increases in the opportunities for education for African Americans in recent years, these students are still struggling to be recognized for their full potential. Hosp and Reschly (2004) report information from a previous study that shows that, at least for African American and Hispanic students, differences in achievement between these groups and Caucasian students show themselves as early as kindergarten. They are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs (Elhoweris, Mutua, Alsheikh, and Holloway, 2005).

Education of Native American Students

Early treaties with Native American peoples provided accommodations for the schooling of Native children. The education provided attempted to transform the culture of the Indians into the mainstream culture of the United States. Educators tried to teach the children to stop being nomadic and instead become farmers. This was an attempt to civilize the native people, which to whites meant to make the Indians’ cultures more like their own (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.31). There were schools for Cherokee people that taught women to sew and men to use farm equipment. Thomas Jefferson and many others thought that to get Indians to assimilate to the dominant culture, it was “important to teach Indians a desire for the accumulation of property and to extinguish the practice of cultural sharing” (Spring, 2005, p.116).

Following the Civilization Act of 1819, schools were formed to educate Native American children. Under the guidance of Superintendent of Indian Trade Thomas L McKenney, attempts were made to convert the Native culture of these students into the Protestant mainstream in only one generation. “These Presbyterians could accept nothing less than the total rejection of the tribal past, and the total transformation of each individual Indian” (Spring, 2005, p.124).

Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian, created a Cherokee alphabet that he wanted to use to help preserve Cherokee culture. Missionaries had only seen this as a way to transfer Indians into Anglo culture. Sequoyah’s alphabet had 86 symbols that all represented a sound from the oral language of the Cherokees. It was somewhat easy to learn, because these symbols represented all the sounds in their spoken language. Using this Alphabet, the Cherokee nation put out a written newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1928 (Spring, 2005, p.126). They were able to use the alphabet, a concept they had learned from settlers and missionaries, to maintain their own culture.

In the late 18^th and early 19^th Century “Both Choctaw and Cherokee classroom materials were written in English and the Native languages…Students in the Choctaw and Cherokee schools demonstrated literacy rates approaching nearly 100% and many youths attended colleges in the east” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.31). According to Spring(2005), the high literacy rates were much higher than whites in Texas and Arkansas (p.129). This threatened many whites, since language was being used in the context of Native culture and was not being used to translate ideas and transition the Native culture to Anglo American.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Native American children were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools where they were stripped of their culture and language. Isolation from their families removed the connection to tribal customs and culture, while teaching English and Anglo customs was emphasized in this removed context.  Students were punished for speaking in their native tongue.  Spring(2005) called these “acts of cultural and linguistic genocide” (p.189). Students were also forced to study and practice Christianity, and forbidden from practicing their native religion or spiritual practices (Wikipedia, 2006).

The Puritan ideals that these schools were run on were almost directly opposite those of Native Americans.

The list of these Puritan ideals included respect for authority; postponing immediate gratification; neatness; punctuality; responsibility for one’s own work; honesty, patriotism, and loyalty; striving for personal achievement; competition; repression of aggression and overt sexual expression; respect for the rights and property of others; and obeying rules and regulations. These principles were anomalies for native peoples who lived in communal settings and had practiced skills for cooperative survival on this continent for thousands of years. (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.30)

To this day, many Native Americans do not trust public schools, referring to it as the white man’s education. There is a negative attitude about these schools in the Native community (Klug and Whitfield, 2003).

After the verdict was handed down in the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954, children living on reservations were able to attend public schools off the reservation. Here Native children were a minority and their needs were largely ignored in these schools. Many children were placed in classes for mentally retarded children, because their language, not their ability, targeted them as unable to learn (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.40). Native American children are still disproportionately placed into special education.

During and after World War I, intelligence tests were used to place students.

According to Spring(2005), these tests “seemed to confirm the racial superiority of the English and Germans. Also, they seemed to confirm to Anglo- Americans that Native Americans and African Americans were inferior races” (p.298). These tests were not culturally sensitive in any way. By giving everyone the same test, which was normed for Anglo Americans, “IQ testing became a new way of segregating students in public schools, this time on the basis of ‘intellectual ability’” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.40). According to Delpit (1995), “when a significant difference exists between the students’ culture and the school’s culture, teachers can easily misread students’ aptitudes, intent, or abilities as a result of the difference in styles of language use and interactional patterns”(p.167).

After conquering territory in the southwest after the Mexican American War, Anglo pioneers made many attempts to dominate and subjugate Mexicans who remained in the area. In 1855, California decided that all classes would be taught in English.

According to Valenzuela(1999), schooling has traditionally been a subtractive process. The transition of students into English from their native language, or English as a second language (ESL) “neither reinforce[s] their native language skills nor their cultural identities” (p.26). The tradition of these types of English only or ESL programs has failed to appreciate Spanish from the start, and continues to undervalue it today.

Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States. Before voting to become a commonwealth in 1951, many Puerto Rican’s resisted the control of the United States, especially in the schools. In the early 20^th century, Americanization policies were enacted in the schools, requiring texts and curriculum to represent the United States’ culture rather than the local culture, and requiring all classes be taught in English. Teachers who could not speak English, or who did not use it to instruct, were fired (Spring, 2005, p.237).  Instead of using the language abilities and capitalizing on their cultural resources, the attempt was made to transition the culture of the students into mainstream American culture from their native Puerto Rican culture. After becoming a commonwealth, Spanish was restored as the official language of the schools (Spring).

Education of Asian Pacific American Students

In the beginning, it was not that Asian Pacific Americans’(APA) culture as not respected in schools, the problem was that they were not allowed to attend schools at all. In 1884, San Francisco passed a resolution prohibiting schools from accepting APA students. The Supreme Court ruled in 1885 that schools must provide education for APA students, and segregated schools were established.

Assumptions by teachers have also hurt APA students. Many Asian Pacific American students are assumed to be exceptionally smart and successful in school. Even when they do not display these characteristics, the teacher may not even notice because they often quietly do their work. This is a stereotype that causes many APA students to not get the support they need in the classroom. The teacher assumes the students are doing well instead of really making it his or her business to know if this is true (Delpit, 1995, p. 170-171).

They “appeal to the individual in the totality of its social roles as a citizen, and family man, representative of society in General and the residents of a particular area. The contents of the media covers all aspects of the relations of man with society and its subsystems, all areas of public relations, which included”. Read the mass media essay if you want to know more.

Broadcast media types

Under the mass media is commonly understood as social institutions that ensure the collection, processing and types of mass communications on a massive scale. Mass information is intended for numerically large, usually geographically dispersed audience and is fast and regularity of distribution, almost simultaneous consumption mediate, to some extent character.

The transmitted information must necessarily be in the public interest. Dissemination is an integral part of the mass spiritual communion of people, which emerged at a certain stage of human development in addition to direct interpersonal communication.

Each of these media has its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.

Essays about media

The specificity of the press expressing its contents through the written word, lies primarily in the more than on radio and television, and analytical texts. The reading process involves a high degree of abstract thinking, active imagination, intellectual stress. In the result, the closer becomes the interaction between the author and the reader. Also, newspaper and magazine texts as a convenient repository of information: you can return to them for a detailed study, they are compact, easy to reproduction, etc. Among the specialized printed publications about health can be noted magazines such as “Health”, “Health of the schoolboy”, “Medicine and health”, “planet health,” “Women’s health” and others. Also, these publications are available on the Internet.

On the Internet a number of specialized sites on health is large enough, only in there are about five hundred.

Importance of mass media. Essay describes the main advantages of a radio are associated with greater compared to TV, promptness and accessibility and almost unlimited spread, and with technical simplicity and low cost production process. However, it should be noted that with the development of scientific and technological progress differences associated with the efficiency and availability have become blurred. Expressive means of radio journalism a live voice, noises, music have high potential accuracy and imagery in the transmission of real events. Today, radio is poorly involved in the dissemination of health information.

Mass media articles

TV combines the capabilities of radio, film, photography, painting, and theater. Synthesizing the image and sound, it is able to achieve almost complete lifelikeness of broadcast pictures, provide the timing of events and the audience watching them. There are the following reasons for such a rapid and massive proliferation of television:

• Information is shaped, holistic in nature and therefore highly affordable;
• TV shows easy to read (do not require even basic literacy);
• Creates the effect of personal presence and participation;
• Much of the information people receive is through vision (it is the main channel for obtaining information about the world).

In order to identify what role in the dissemination of information about health needs to play the media you need to define the purpose and functions of mass media in society.

American theorists and historians of printing, there are four theories that characterize the media, each of which has its own specific purpose. First, it is the authoritarian theory, the purpose of which is to maintain the policies of the current government, as well as in the service of the state. Secondly, the libertarian theory. Its purpose is to inform, entertain and sell, but mostly to help find the truth and to control the government. Thirdly is the theory of social responsibility, which aims to inform, entertain and sell, but basically to translate the conflict to the level of the discussion. And the fourth theory socialist. Its purpose is to contribute to the success and maintenance of the socialist system, in particular of the dictatorship of the party.

In modern formed a different approach to the media close to libertarian theory. It is also called the concept of free will. Theorists of this doctrine clearly defined functions of the society and the state. Man in this conception is the goal, and the happiness and welfare of the individual target companies. The main function of the society is to promote the interests of its individual members.

“The state exists as a method to ensure the individual’s environment in which he can realize their potential”. On this basis, the main purpose of media is to satisfy the needs of society in information. The need for information is the need to aggregate such information, in which the company needs for normal functioning and development. The functioning and vitality of society as a whole depends first and foremost on the health of its individuals.

Health stands as one of the necessary and essential conditions of active, creative and fulfilling life in society. This is what at the time drew the attention of Marx, presenting the disease as constrained in your freedom life. Inadequate level of health (ceteris paribus) has a negative impact on social, labour and economic activity of people, productivity and intensity of labor; a negative effect on some indices of natural movement of population, as well as to health and physical development of the offspring. In this regard, information about health should take a leading place in the information space of television, radio, press and Internet.

Annual medical statistics shows an increase in morbidity and an increase in the number of persons with disabilities, which in turn adversely affects the demographic situation in General. On average, the population is annually reduced by 600-900 thousand. The mortality rate in 2005 reached a value of 16.1 ppm. Of particular concern is the increased mortality in the young age cohorts. In 2005, life expectancy at birth was 65.3 years: men is 58.9 years, women 72,3 years. Such a significant difference (13.4 years) between life expectancy of men and women in no country in the world. This gap is much higher than in most countries where this value is on average 5 to 7 years.

To preserve health is the urgent task of forming the entire population of a new culture of health that not only reduces the likelihood of diseases, but also allows you to progressively strengthen a person’s vitality based on the use of traditional and non-traditional methods of prevention and treatment of diseases.

Form of mass media

To change the attitude of people towards their health is impossible without the help of powerful tool for shaping public opinion – media. The role of the media in shaping attitudes, values, norms, ideals and patterns of behavior for individuals and society as a whole, is invaluable. Television, radio and the press, fulfilling educational, informational, cultural and spiritual functions, is able to increase the interest of the population to the problems of maintaining a high level of health.

Currently mass media topics issue of research is the study of the media field, in particular the kind of social dimension has disseminated information about health.

It should be noted that modern media can have both positive and negative affect in the dissemination of health information.

A positive role could be played by social advertising. In the particular advertising of toothpastes, shampoos, hygiene products, etc. to perpetuate in the minds of men observe the rules of personal hygiene.

Unfortunately, the domestic media is often found in advertising products that can harm the health. For example, in advertising food restaurant “Mcdonald’s” focuses on the fact that the suggested diet is full and healthy. However, according to medical experts, the products of “fast food” only has a negative impact on health, leading to such undesirable consequences as obesity.

Currently, the advertising of strong alcoholic beverages and tobacco products on television is prohibited. Quite obviously, such measures need to be taken in the relations of alcoholic beverages. Moreover, for effective struggle with bad habits, is required to prohibit such advertising not only on television but also on radio and on outdoor billboards.

Introduction

Since projections show that schools will continue to become more diverse, it is important to learn how teachers can provide equitable education to all groups of students. One important way to do this is to look at the historical experiences of diverse peoples within the schooling system in America that may affect the way a cultural group views public schooling. The following is a brief history of reading instruction in America, as well as a look at the experiences of diverse peoples in the American schooling system, which can help us understand how cultural groups as a whole may view schooling in light of their historical experiences. Also discussed is the historical promotion or devaluation of different languages and dialects, the use of multicultural literature in the history of the American school system, and a history of differentiation in relation to races and cultures.

Reading Instruction in the United States

“Puritan influence on the schools in New England … endowed American schools with many of the values incorporated even today in the nations schools” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.30). There has been a history of using schooling to strip students of their native culture in order to create one unified culture in America. Ethnicity and culture have not been seen as resources, but something to change into the dominant Anglo Saxon Protestant way of living, from the time of colonization by the Europeans.

In many situations throughout the history of schooling in America, minority students have been forced to study with racist or stereotypical material, left out of the curriculum, and pushed to try to succeed in a system that is geared toward the needs of the majority, in America’s case White Anglo Saxon Protestants.

In general, most minority cultures have been put through subtractive schooling, a process in which the aspects of their cultures are taken away rather than used as resources in their education. Their cultural and linguistic abilities have not been valued or nurtured by schools. In many ways, there has been an attempt to eliminate these resources (Valenzuela, 1999, p.26). Spring (2005) called this deculturalization, detailing how Anglo Americans attempted to destroy the unique culture of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and immigrants from other Latin American, European, and Asian countries. He summed up this phenomenon saying the hidden message in all this was “be like us… and we might accept you” (p.183).

In Colonial America, people thought that in order to achieve salvation, one must be able to read the Bible (Monaghan, Hartman, and Monaghan, 2002). The first law requiring reading to be taught was in Massachusetts in 1642. In 1647, another law was passed in Massachusetts requiring towns over 50 families to pay for a public school teacher. These early schools used the alphabet method to teach reading orally. It was a part to whole approach in which the students read each letter sound, each syllable, and then the entire word. The New England Primer and the Bible were the most common books used for instruction during the time period (Monaghan et al., p. 224-25).

After the Revolutionary War, America was a new nation with many different cultures coming together as one. Post revolutionary leaders “rejected the idea of a multicultural society and advocated the creation of a unified American culture” (Spring, 2005, p.44). Anglo Saxon Protestant traditions took the dominant role in this unified society. Schools reflected this trend, in effect pushing cultural minority students to assimilate to a unified American culture.

An example of this press for the use of Anglo Saxon Protestant values as the general American culture can be seen in the schooling controversies in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s over language and culture in the schools (Spring, 2005). Many Anglo Saxon Protestants were concerned over the high numbers of German immigrants in the area. There was an effort by Benjamin Franklin and others to make English the official language of schools. Charity schools were established, in which English was required as the language of instruction, even though two thirds of the students spoke German.

Though there was a large uproar from the German community that caused these schools to fail, this attempt to Anglicize cultural minorities foreshadowed attempts to normalize the cultures of other groups in the country’s future.

During this period, Noah Webster penned the first American literacy textbooks that included a speller, a grammar, and a reader. The reader’s were for older children who could already read. It was not until later that simplified texts were provided for young children to read. These early basal readers had subscripts to indicate vowel pronunciations, the intention being to generate a national pronunciation. By eliminating regional pronunciations, Webster hoped to unify the new country with a national dialect (Monaghan et al., 2002, p 225).

The Common School movement (1830s and 40s) had many purposes, but one of the main goals was to ensure the unification of the country through a common culture based on Protestant Anglo Saxon values. The moral power of the school was based in the Protestant Bible, though the morals of different religions and cultures were not represented, and so possibly devalued, in schools. The movement, “was, in part, an attempt to halt the drift toward a multicultural society” (Spring, 2005, p.102).

Despite the shift toward acceptance of a multicultural society America has made since the country’s early years, recent legislation has moved us back toward the unified culture the common school strove for. The No Child Left Behind act of 2001 mandated that bilingual education be used only as a transition into English. What was formerly named the Office of Bilingual Education was changed to Office of English Language Acquisition, Language enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient (Spring, 2005, p.462). The goal here was to provide for learning English without consideration of how to help the child maintain their first language. By requiring standardized tests, the law also ensured that curriculum is generalized for mainstream students, helping “to ensure that a single culture would dominate the school” (Spring, p.461).

In the mid 1800s reforms to the traditional forms of instruction started popping up.  Johann Pestalozzi, a Swiss educator, believed that learning occurred through concrete experiences, and promoted moving away from rote learning. His theories influenced those in the American education field. Spelling books were also rejected for the fact that they contained words students could not understand or use. The readers used in schools were attacked for their adult themes and wording. All the reformers promoted a stronger emphasis on meaning (Monaghan et al., 2002). Instead of memorizing words and pronunciations, the emphasis was shifting to making meaning of writing rather than just decoding the words.

The McGuffey Eclectic Readers were a series of textbooks created in this time period to teach children reading. These books were now being used with all levels of readers, not just the students with more advanced ability to read. The stories still had a religious, moralizing overtone. By the end of the century, the moralizing became less blatant than it had been in the past, but still was present in most texts used for school. The most popular themes included “honesty, courage, hard work, self reliance, patriotism, and temperance”( Monaghan et al., 2002, p. 226). It was common for these books to contain the gender stereotypes of the time.

Starting in the 1870s and through 1940, the progressive education movement moved toward the word method of reading instruction, where whole meaningful words were taught rather than the letter components (Monaghan et al., 2002). Reading for meaning was encouraged, and fairy tales and myths were used for lower level readers. These were chosen for their representation of the beliefs of so called primitive peoples. This was a move away from the patriotic writings and bible stories found in earlier reading texts that portrayed mostly Anglo Saxon Protestant ideologies. During this time there was also a move toward more silent reading by children and the beginning of testing in reading.

In the 1940s, the intrinsic phonics method was used, in which phoneme grapheme correspondence was learned by inferring the relationship from previously known sight words (Monaghan et al., 2002). We see this in William S. Gray’s Dick and Jane series. Controlled, repetitive vocabulary gave children a chance to learn sight words, and phonic knowledge was derived from these words. Meaning was of primary importance at the time, and children relied on context and illustrations to comprehend the stories. The content of reading texts also moved toward realistic family settings, though the content consisted of “…beautifully illustrated stories…filled with white, middle-class, suburban families, mothers in aprons, foolish little sisters, and problem-solving older brothers” (Monaghan et al., p. 228). Though the content may have been real life to some children, for the most part gender stereotypes were common place in these stories, and content excluded depictions of people in poverty or children of different races.

In the 1955, the professional consensus on the word method was attacked by Rudolf Flesch in his book Why Johnny Can’t Read—and What You can Do About It. He claimed that the phonics approach was more effective, though the professional community did not agree. Even over the professional community’s objections, reading texts started moving toward systematic phonics approaches (Monaghan et al., 2002). In 1964, Bond and Dykstra tried to find the best method for reading instruction, “…and concluded that there was more variation within methods than between them and that no one method was superior” for teaching reading (Monaghan et al., p. 229).

In the late 1980s, the whole language approach appeared, positing that reading acquisition both occurred naturally when a child was surrounded by authentic materials, the language arts were integrated into other curriculum, and the child was able to use their imagination and individual abilities to their fullest extent (Monaghan et al., 2002). This approach made the reading textbooks less desired and promoted a more extensive publishing of trade books for children.

The embedded phonics approach of this method upset parents, who viewed it as anti-phonics since the instruction was not explicit. The political climate shifted and some states started passing laws that required teachers to use systematic and explicit phonics instruction. The Right to Read organization and many parents have pushed for more systematic approach to teaching phonics, which is the current climate in many schools (Monaghan et al., 2002). In 2000, sixty three percent of kindergarten and first grade teachers surveyed said they thought phonics instruction should be taught systematically and explicitly to beginning readers (Morrow et al., 2002).

The goal of this paper was to find the strategies for teaching early literacy to students of a variety of cultural backgrounds. It explored studies that sought to illuminate the needs of different student groups and methods that teachers of emergent readers and writers could use to equitably teach all their students. By creating a bank of resources with these needs and methods, I hope to provide a chance for equity in the classroom where a teacher can give all their students an even chance at success.

Limitations

The topic of race, culture, and class is huge. This paper is limited to the study of major ethnic, cultural, and class groups in the United States, and studies that help illuminate strategies that support literacy development for these groups. The focus was on strategies for emergent literacy development, and I focused an age range of grades from pre-kindergarten through 5^th grade, with an emphasis on Kindergarten through 3^rd grade. Some older students (late elementary and early middle school) are still acquiring the primary literacy skills that are the focus in the early years of elementary school, and some strategies for helping these students may be included as well, but are not a major focus of this paper. Some studies with older subjects may also have implications for students of all ages, and a few of these are included as well.

Controversies

The National Reading Panel Report

The National Reading Panel released a report in 2000 detailing the best practice for teaching reading. It considered only experimental and quasi-experimental studies. The panel justified this action, because the report could turn into mandates for schools and the relationships between method and result needed to be very clear. The report was used as the basis for the Reading Excellence act instituted by George W. Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige in 2001 (Shanahan, 2002).

The panel found that there were six major elements to effective reading instruction, including conducting phonemic awareness activities, implementing systematic and explicit phonics instruction, using guided oral reading, encouraging children to read, using incidental and direct vocabulary instruction, and teaching children comprehension strategies(Shanahan, 2002).

Some in the educational community feel that the National Reading Panel left out important aspects of reading acquisition in the study. The report considered only studies of experimental design, but there is a large body of research that was left out of the study simply because it was of a different design (Hiebert & Adler, 2002). Qualitative and descriptive data was not considered (Shanahan, 2002). This research could be used to guide practice, but was not considered by the panel, and thus is not in the official government recommendation for teaching reading (Hiebert & Adler).

According to Hiebert and Adler (2002), the panel also failed to look into different types of instruction, such as the literature based reading instruction which is used in a majority of schools (p. 119). The panel also did not address the teaching of English to students who did not already know it, one of the most challenging and important jobs for a reading teacher. Because of the aspects of emergent literacy instruction that were left out of these studies, it is important to look to other sources for a more well rounded idea of strategies that work.

Because the panel did not differentiate their research for different types of students, the recommendations they make are based on the needs of the majority, which disadvantages minority students who may have different needs. By focusing on only quantitative studies, the panel is not considering the benefit using other types of research might have for students inside and outside the mainstream U.S. culture. By leaving out study on how to teach students who are language minority, the panel devalues their worth in the school system. Finding methods that work for all students, or including all students in its recommendations, would be a more equitable proposal than the one put forth by the National Reading Panel.

Color-Blindness

Another controversy in teaching multicultural students is the issue of being so called color-blind as a teacher. Treating all children the same in order to treat them fairly seems sensible, but in reality all students have different needs and some believe that treating them all one way disadvantages minority students. “Teachers [have] tried to become ‘color-blind’ in their classrooms in order to treat students equally. In doing so, they devalued the positive influences of the students’ natal communities” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.41). Delpit (1995) states that when teachers attempt to not treat children differently based on race, they do their students a great disservice. Because the race of the child is not being recognized, the child may infer “that there is something wrong with being black or brown, and that it should not be noticed? I would like to suggest that if one does not see color, then one does not really see children.” (p. 177).

Some contend that teachers must recognize a student’s ethnicity, culture, and class as frame of reference, a resource, and something to be honored. If any of these things is ignored, a student’s education will suffer. In the struggle to treat all children equitably, some assume we must treat them equally, but many teachers who work with minority communities recognize that treating all children the same disadvantages minority students.

Summary

In review, because of current levels of diversity and a continuing trend towards even greater diversity, it is important to consider the needs and unique abilities of nonmajority students in order to have equitable schools where all students learn. If there is no consideration for culture, schools will leave more and more children behind as classrooms continue to diversify. The early years set the stage for all later schooling, so it is important for teachers of primary literacy take these needs into account. Teachers who attempt to be color blind, and not treat minority students differently, only further disadvantage students who will not succeed when treated the same as majority students. Teachers sometimes disadvantage students by overestimating or underestimating their abilities based on stereotypes.

The goal of this paper is to help teachers find methods of teaching a diverse student base that will provide resources for all types of students that a teacher can use in order to provide equitable education to all their students. The next Chapter will explore the history of schooling in America in relation to methods for teaching reading and the experiences diverse cultural groups have had in public schools. Since cultural differences have caused conflict and misunderstandings in the classroom throughout history, it is important to keep in mind our purpose here, to find ways to help all children succeed. In order to help children of different cultures to learn as much as they can, it is important for teachers to understand the history that culture has experienced.

Abstract

This paper reviews 30 articles relevant to the effective primary literacy instruction in a multicultural classroom. The history of multicultural teaching in America has shown itself to be a subtractive process, in which there have been attempts to force minority cultures to assimilate to majority values, cultural practices, and language. This is the context into which many students of minority cultures enter into school. Identifying culturally relevant teaching practices is vital to the success of these students. The use of multicultural literature, acceptance by the teacher of a student’s use of heritage language and dialects, and specific culturally relevant methods for teaching reading are discussed as ways to engage students and to help all people’s children succeed in learning to read.

Statement of the Research Question and Rationale

What are teaching methods that help students from diverse culture and class backgrounds succeed in learning to read? This question is important because classrooms are becoming more and more diverse. According to Willis (2002), the shifting demographics will continue to construct an increasingly diverse American society.

Students from minority cultures were approximately thirty six percent of the school population in 2000 (Willis). About sixty three percent of students in schools are Caucasian, seventeen percent are African American, fourteen percent are Hispanic, four percent are Asian American or Pacific Islander, and fewer than two percent are Native American (Willis, p. 151). There is also great diversity among these groups, due to immigrant status, country of origin, and other cultural subgroups. The less than two percent of Native American students alone are comprised of 280 different tribes that “…differ in terms of their language, traditions, economics, and social interactions” (Willis, p. 152). According to Riccio et al. (2001), “the number of Hispanic immigrants in the United States continues to increase… and it is estimated that by 2020, one in four children in U.S. schools will be Hispanic, with even greater proportions in specific regions of the country” (p. 585). Looking at these statistics, it is clear that many classrooms will have on significant percentage of their population consisting of children who are linguistically and culturally diverse.

Teachers have students who come from a variety of backgrounds, and these student groups will continue to grow, and diversify. Differences of race, ethnicity, class, immigrant status, and language of origin are factors teachers have to consider in determining a student’s needs. Since children learn to make meaning through their experiences with their culture, the strategies for teaching reading that work with mainstream students will not necessarily be effective with students from minority backgrounds (Willis, 2002, 150). Treating all students as if they have the same educational needs will normalize the majority. This can leave many students who already belong to oppressed groups even further disadvantaged, creating inequity in the classroom.

The early years of literacy training are some of the most important for the rest of a child’s time in school. According to Barone (2003), children’s achievement in literacy in the early grades is the best predictor of their future success in reading, and “the quality of instruction in kindergarten and the primary grades is the single best weapon against reading failure” (p. 970). Lane, Menzies, Munton, Von Duering, and English (2005) concur, stating that “if children have not learned to read by the fourth grade, they have an 88% probability of never learning to read, even if intervention is put in place”(p. 21).

Considering this phenomenon in the context of the multicultural, multilingual classroom, it is important to find ways to help students from all backgrounds succeed in early reading acquisition.

In order to be effective as a teacher of literacy, it is important to know the background of all students and how cultural factors could affect their learning. It is also important to use these factors as resources and skills rather than as problems to overcome. According to Delpit (1995), “Schools must provide these children the content that other families from a different cultural orientation provide at home. This does not mean separating children according to family background, but instead, ensuring that each classroom incorporate (sic) strategies appropriate for all the children it confines” (p.30). By using strategies that work for all students in a classroom, a teacher can be confident that success is attainable for all.

The teaching that goes on in most schools reflects middle class norms and values. For students who do not fit this mold, that education will not help them achieve as much as instruction based on their needs. “To provide schooling for everyone’s children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it” (Delpit, 1995, 28). If we want to give students a chance at upward mobility and an equitable chance in life, teachers must provide education that evens the playing field.

Many times teachers recognize ethnicity, culture, and language and use it to stereotype children. While it is important to consider these factors of the student’s identity as resources, it is never acceptable to make assumptions about individual students. For example, some Asian Pacific American students’ “culturally influenced, nondisruptive classroom behavior, along with the teacher’s stereotype of ‘good Asian students,’ … [can lead to him or] her not receiving appropriate instruction” (Delpit, 1995, p.171). Even though the teacher is assuming the student is more able than he or she is, the student is still being done a disservice because their needs are not met. Conversely, teachers can also use ethnicity, culture, and language to track minority students into programs meant for less able students. For Native American students, “The cultural deficit model continued to drive the engine programming education for students with ‘special needs.’ Many of these children were identified on the basis of their cultures and languages, not on the basis of their abilities” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.41). This occurs not only for Native American students, but for other minority groups as well. Teachers often attribute limited Standard English production to be a sign of a student not being able or intelligent, and that is not the case in most situations. Similarly, understanding the role dialect plays will help provide new teaching approaches to enhance achievement in African American and other students (Charity, Scarborough, and Griffin, 2004). Many of these students are highly intelligent, and are tracked into special education or vocational programs instead of being given their rightful chance at an education because their language does not match the standard English dialect.

It is important to study the needs and special abilities of the diverse types of students encountered in today’s schools. In order to be effective and equitable teachers, it is necessary to provide instruction in a way that all students have a chance at success.

This means recognizing a student’s identity, and using it to empower rather than hold back.

Definitions

In order to continue, it is important to define the terms used in this paper so we can move forward with a consistent understanding of the author’s meaning.

Emergent Literacy is used here to refer to the early literacy experiences of young people just coming into their abilities as readers. It would refer to the early elementary grades, and deals mostly with ways in which students acquire the ability to read.

Wiencek, Cipielewski, Vazzano, and Sturken, (1998) define emergent literacy as “behaviors that precede and develop into conventional literacy” (p. 1).

Culture is a multifaceted word that we can use to mean many different things. It is not the same as ethnicity, or race, but rather encompasses the norms and values of a specific group of people. Delpit (1995) identified several aspects that make up culture, “…linguistic forms, communicative strategies… presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting” (p.25). Religion, country of origin, ethnicity, and many other factors all influence culture.

It is important to identify a distinction, though, between culture and ethnicity.

Ethnicity is used here to refer to a person’s race. Though race can not be defined genetically, it is a cultural construct that has a history of defining people in this country and in the world at large. It manifests itself in particular physical characteristics common in specific races. I used it here because it is a factor that has grouped people historically and continues to do so today. Race can be attached to culture, but it can also be a less strong influence on the culture of some students who may be part of a minority race, but part of the mainstream culture. There has been a long, unfortunately somewhat effective, history of attempts to eradicate minority cultures by the U.S. government. A teacher must not assume by the color of a child’s skin that his/her race is attached to a specific culture we might identify with that race, but rather understand that it might and learn from the child what their culture is.

Different terms were used to describe racial groups. Tatum (1997) preferred to use the terms that the people themselves prefer. The terms Native American, Native, and Indian are here used interchangeably. Many Native Americans use the term Indian or American Indian to describe themselves. Asian Pacific American is used to describe people of Asian descent, as well as the actual nationality when possible, such as Chinese or Chinese American. For African Americans, the preceding term, or Black, which many African Americans prefer, is used. Hispanic, Latino, or the country of origin is used to describe students from Mexico, Central, and South America, and the descendants of immigrants from these locations.

It was also important to define class. Here it was used to describe a person’s socioeconomic status, or their access to monetary resources and the benefits that go along with that.   Most teachers today work within a decidedly middle class system, though they work with children from both upper class and students living in poverty, or the poor working class. It is the students in poverty that this paper most concerned itself with.

There are students in situational poverty and generational poverty (Payne, 1996). Poverty does not deal only with the presence or absence of money, but with the cultural way people interact in different types of poverty, mainly situational and generational.

Situational poverty is a situation in which a person has most of the cultural resources from a middle class background, while a generational poverty situation is one in which the family has been poor for at least two generations. People from different financial backgrounds, including generational poverty, situational poverty, middle class, and wealth, will have much different resources to deal with the difficulties of life. There are ways of handling situations that have to do with financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical resources, as well as relationships/role models to help you deal with problems and hidden rules of interactions for different classes that people from another group may not understand or be able to overcome. (Payne, 1996, p.7). Someone in situational poverty likely knows the hidden rules for the middle class, and has the resources that come along with it, if not the monetary resources. Often it is easier to escape situational poverty than generational poverty because of these resources.

Another term that may be used in this paper is African American English. This is the term Craig, Connor, and Washington (2003) used for the dialect spoken by many African Americans in this country. There are different terms used for this in different studies, such as Black Vernacular English or Ebonics, but the term African American English, or AAE, is used throughout the paper.

Multicultural literature is also addressed in this paper, and is often defined by “the character’s physical attributes, languages, and status as members of marginalized groups” (Harris, 2002, p. 368). The term can also define the author or illustrator of the book if he or she be of a minority group.

Another subject that comes up often in this research is Phonics and Phonemic or Phonological Awareness. Phonics can be defined as the association of letters (graphemes) with the phoneme (sound) it represents (Morrow, Holt, and Sass, 2002).

Phonemic or Phonological awareness is the ability of a student to identify the different sounds in oral words, and manipulate them.

 

Article 3. Last minute Christmas: cake kits

It’s still not too late to make a Christmas cake. Vicky Frost tests five kits and asks: can you actually fit a slice in on the big day?

It’s an odd part of the annual festivities: the bit that gets brought out once everything else has been devoured and you’re in need of more calories like the house is in need of more fairy lights. But a Christmas without Christmas cake would be unthinkable. Long after even the turkey remnants have gone and the new year diet should have started, you can still rely on there being a slab in the tin. In some families it can last until spring.

That’s partly because loads of people don’t like Christmas cake – screwing up their face at the cake, or the marzipan, or the cake and the marzipan. What fools! Personally, I’m fond of both in small amounts. But two slices is more than enough to last me until next year. Which is possibly why I’ve never been particularly moved to bake one from scratch.

My dad traditionally made our family cake, often procrastinating so much that he’d only get round to icing it on Christmas Eve while the rest of the family trouped off to midnight mass. That’s not such a terrible plan when you consider the likelihood of anyone having any room for cake after a massive Christmas lunch, or a Boxing Day trifle. But it does highlight the problem with making a Christmas cake – yet more faff at the busiest time of the year.

Which no doubt explains the popularity of the Christmas cake kit. A bag with everything you need to bake the perfect Christmas cake without weighing, overnight soaking and abandoned half bags of fruit. Except, you have to buy, erm, eggs, butter, lemons, and in most cases marzipan and icing – some would question whether it was worth buying a kit at all. That probably depends on whether you are ever likely to bust open the treacle, spices and flour ever again. If not, the kit is definitely worth it. If however you could be cajoled into making your own mincemeat with the leftover fruit, it might be worth reconsidering.

I tested five kits currently on the market. Tesco’s comes courtesy of Mary Berry – whose baking knowledge knows no bounds. It includes all the usual business you’d expect in the way of soaked fruits, chopped nuts, bagged spices, but also marzipan and icing. The result was disappointing in our blind taste tests – and I thought it rather a mean cake in terms of both plumpness and volume of fruit. Sorry Mary, but for once we will have to disagree.

Faring rather better was Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference kit, which had fruit so sticky and juicy it was veering into pudding territory. For me the balance of sponge and fruit tipped too far in favour of the raisin element. Others thought it tasted “like a fruitcake should do: dense and moist”. The Harrods cake also split opinion. On the upside, it comes with (fondant) icing and marzipan, and all the ingredients are packaged in a loose bottom cake tin. On the downside, you have to soak your own fruit, which rather defeats the object and means you need to factor in the cost of booze. The end result is a curious thing. Some of our testers liked it for the generous hunks of cherry that studded the sponge. But for me it was rather odd: an almost gingery cake with too little fruit.

Which leaves the two cakes that did best in the blind tasting, and in my home testing: Whitworth’s and Delia’s for Waitrose. Of the two, Delia’s is the more generous, giving a good, deep 20cm cake. It’s also the one that will please more people – here the sponge is light, the fruit sweet but not sticky, and the balance more in favour of cake than fruit. As an occasional fruitcake eater, it’s my favourite. More hardcore fruitcake fans, however, were quick to praise the Whitworth’s kit, which turns out a boozy, well-balanced cake that is firm enough to slice properly, but sticky enough to count as more fruit cake than tea loaf. Both will need you to buy your own icing and marzipan, but both really deliver when it comes to flavour.

Of course, it’s officially a bit late to be making your cake now, but there are tricks to help those intent on baking at the eleventh hour (any tips you’ve gleaned over the years are welcome). Jane Asher’s last minute recipe has it that heating and soaking the fruit in the boozy liquid gives an overnight appearance and taste of maturity. Using dark brown sugar helps. Delia offers a last minute sherry mincemeat cake recipe that can be made on the day itself (if you don’t have enough to do already) Or try making a lighter version, as the Cottage Smallholder suggests.

The DIY kits are now being reduced in price and mine tasted good in under three weeks, so I reckon you could get away with doing one now, especially if you don’t force it on yourself on Christmas Day when you’ll be too full to appreciate it. Treat everyone by instead cracking it open during those long holiday days in between Christmas and New Year. Or are you a committed Christmas foodster that stoically devours a slice of cake after the rest of the Christmas day feasting? [48]

 

Article 4. How do I: Secure my home wi-fi network?

Jamie Merrill

Thursday 15 December 2011

Most of us have stumbled into someone else’s unsecured wi-fi network by mistake in search of a stable connection, but not all surfers are so benign.

According to an “ethical hacking” study carried out by a card-protection company, nearly half of Britain’s home wi-fi networks can be hacked in less than five seconds, leaving the hacker free to hijack emails, steal bank account details and commit fraud.

We tend to think of hackers as sophisticated criminal networks but all it takes is a modern laptop and widely available software to breach most home computer networks.

Your first line of defence for your home network is its encryption, which secures the data transmitted between your PC and wireless router. Unfortunately, until recently the majority of routers were shipped with encryption disabled or only installed with WEP, an out-of-date encryption format.

If you haven’t already, enable your encryption. To do this you need to connect your router to your PC with a LAN cable (from £5.99 at maplin.co.uk). Then simply open your PC’s web browser and enter your IP address (normally found on the back of the router).

The interface will vary depending on the model of your router (see manufacturers’ websites for more details) but if your computer is up to date – Windows XP or later – select the WPA or WPA2 form of encryption and create your own unique password of at least 14 letters and numbers. If your router only supports the insecure WEP format check the manufacturer’s website for a firmware update to support WPA.

And for additional protection consider running a software firewall on your PC. A good free download is Zone Labs’ ZoneAlarm, which is reliable and free to download (zonealarm) [51].

 

Article 5. Haemophilia gene therapy shows early success

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

11 December 2011 Last updated at 03:13 GMT

Just one injection could be enough to mean people with haemophilia B no longer need medication, according to an early study in the UK and the US. Six patients were given a virus that infects the body with the blueprints needed to produce blood-clotting proteins. Four of them could then stop taking their drugs.

Doctors said the gene therapy was “potentially life-changing”. Other researchers have described it as a “truly a landmark study.”

People with haemophilia B have an error in their genetic code, which means they cannot produce a protein called factor IX, which is critical for blood-clotting.

Patients are currently treated with factor IX injections, sometimes multiple times per week, but the manufacturing process is expensive.

Researchers at University College London and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the US were looking for a more permanent solution.

Virus modification

They took a virus which infects people without symptoms – adeno-associated virus eight. It was then modified to infect liver cells with the genetic material for factor IX. The gene should then persist in the liver cells, telling the cells to manufacture the protein.

Six people were injected with the modified virus at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Two were given a low dose, two a middle dose and two a high level.

Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed levels of factor IX could be increased. Normally, patients will have factor IX levels less than 1% of those found in people without haemophilia.

After injection, levels of factor IX ranged from 2% to 12%. The first patient treated has maintained levels of 2% for more than 16 months. One of the patients receiving the highest dose maintained levels which fluctuated between 8% and 12% for 20 weeks.

Carl Walker, aged 26 and from Berkshire, showed the greatest improvement. He said: “I have not needed any of my normal treatment, either preventative or on-demand as a result of an injury. Previously, I used to infuse at home three times a week. I play football, run and take part in triathlons – and previously I might have had to infuse both before I took part and possibly after as well. Not having to do that has been absolutely brilliant.”

Dr Amit Nathwani from University College London told the BBC that patients with 12% of normal factor IX production would no longer be seen in the clinic.

“They would be able to go about their normal daily lives without any problems. The only time that they would have a problem is if they were involved in a road traffic accident or had a big fall from a building site. In the absence of severe major trauma these individuals would not know that they have haemophilia.”

He said the aim of the research was to take patients from a severe form of haemophilia to a mild one.

‘Fantastic start’

“All the patients have actually benefited from this gene transfer approach, even the patients who have not been able to stop protein concentrate infusion [normal therapy].”

He said these people needed fewer injections of factor IX.

“This is the first study that has shown that you can actually achieve stable, long-term, therapeutic level of expression [factor IX production] in subjects with severe haemophilia B, so it’s a fantastic start.

“This is a great breakthrough, this is the first time that anybody has been able to show that.”

The trial was designed to test the safety of the procedure. Trials in more patients will be needed to fully determine its effectiveness and patients will need to be followed for longer periods of time to see how long the effect lasts.

There was an immune response against the infected liver cells around seven to nine weeks after the virus was injected. In the trial it was controlled with steroids, but doctors will also want to see if they can avoid it happening.

Dr Katherine Ponder, from the Washington University School of Medicine, said this was “truly a landmark study, since it is the first to achieve long-term expression of a blood protein at therapeutically relevant levels”.

She added: “If further studies determine that this approach is safe, it may replace the cumbersome and expensive protein therapy currently used for patients.”

Chris James, chief executive of the Haemophilia Society, said: “The society is delighted to see world-class research in the UK which may ultimately provide therapies to improve the life of those with haemophilia showing such positive results at this stage.

“These are early days and all medical and scientific developments need to go through extensive testing for efficacy and side effects. As such we would not wish to raise false hopes at this stage. However, we hope that this research will eventually result in the removal of the need for regular injections and significantly reduce painful bleeds and debilitating joint damage for those living with haemophilia.” [27]

Article 1. Twilight’ Beats Newcomers at Box Office’

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: November 27, 2011

LOS ANGELES — A family film free-for-all over the holiday weekend ended with puppets doing cartwheels, elves wondering what went wrong and Martin Scorsese somewhere in between.

Hollywood’s five-day Thanksgiving sales period — considered crucial to generating momentum through Christmas — was not as bountiful as studio officials had hoped. Ticket sales totaled about $234 million, an 11 percent decline from the same stretch last year, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles ticketing data.

The No. 1 movie was a holdover: “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1” (Summit Entertainment) took in an estimated $62.3 million during the long weekend for a two-week total of $221.3 million.

Among new releases “The Muppets” (Walt Disney Studios) was the top performer, placing second over all with estimated ticket sales of $42 million. That was a big win for Kermit, Miss Piggy and their pals, who have languished in recent years; their last box-office outing was the 1999 flop “Muppets From Space.” Sweetening the victory was the film’s relatively inexpensive price; “The Muppets” cost about $45 million to make.

Directed by James Bobin, a big-screen newcomer, “The Muppets” generated positive reviews and received an A in audience exit polls. “Nostalgia helped, but existing fans can sometimes make your job more difficult,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s executive vice president for distribution. “You have to bring a great experience because people are comparing it to their memories.”

The dancing penguins of “Happy Feet Two” (Warner Brothers) were third, taking in about $18.4 million for a disappointing two-week total of nearly $44 million. Also delivering subpar results were the elves of “Arthur Christmas,” which cost Sony Pictures Entertainment about $100 million to make but placed fourth with about $17 million in ticket sales.

Sony compared its well-reviewed “Arthur Christmas” with two movies that were initially considered bombs — “The Polar Express” (2004) and “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” (2009) — but ended their domestic runs with less dismal totals. “As moviegoers start to shift into the end-of-the-year holiday mode, we know we will continue to play solidly,” Steve Elzer, a Sony spokesman, said by e-mail.

Mr. Scorsese’s 3-D “Hugo,” a Paramount Pictures and GK Films release based on the children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” took in about $15.4 million for fifth place. It also received outstanding reviews and managed to keep pace despite playing in only 1,277 theaters. (“Happy Feet Two,” by comparison, was booked into 3,611 locations.)

The problem: “Hugo” was enormously expensive to make, costing $150 million to $170 million. Paramount hopes that strong word of mouth will deliver solid results as “Hugo” reaches more theaters.

On the art-house front Oscar contenders like “The Descendants,” “My Week with Marilyn,” “A Dangerous Method” and “The Artist” all attracted solid audiences. “The Artist,” a $14 million black-and-white silent film from the Weinstein Company, stood out. Playing in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles starting Friday, it had a per-screen average of $52,604, one of the year’s best results for the specialty marketplace; total sales were $210,414.

Also noteworthy was the performance of “The Descendants,” which stars George Clooney as a father coping with problems of mortality and real estate. That Fox Searchlight movie, playing in limited release, took in $9.2 million for a two-week total of $10.7 million. Sheila DeLoach, Searchlight’s executive vice president for distribution, said the studio was “extremely encouraged” to see the film do well in suburban theaters [56].

 

Article 2. College Students Replace Poverty With Creativity

By JENNIFER CONLIN

Published: November 25, 2011

A one-stop destination for Times fashion coverage and the latest from the runways.

“I did not want to ask my parents for more money,” said Ms. Malyshev, a sophomore at Northeastern in Boston, where yearly tuition runs $51,000 with room and board. A Craigslist posting for a hair model looked like an easy $250.

There was a catch. “To earn the $250, I had to let them do anything they wanted to my hair,” said Ms. Malyshev, who walked in with long, sleek blond tresses and emerged a few hours later a brunette with shaggy bangs and layers. “From now on, I plan to stick to psychological testing,” she said, referring to the roughly $20 an hour she often makes filling out university research questionnaires. (“Harvard pays the best in the Boston area,” she added.)

There is plenty of pain to go around in this economy. But college students, the generation facing the dual misery of unprecedented tuition levels and grim employment prospects after graduation, are feeling a special sting. As a result, penny-pinching and creative cash accumulation are becoming something like campus sports.

Mira Hager, a sophomore at Macalester College in St. Paul, carries an ample supply of cash from home so she can avoid the $3 withdrawal fees at local A.T.M.’s. She saved $300 by borrowing many of her textbooks from the library, rather than buying them. She also works a campus job nine hours a week as a building manager but has a better plan for next year. “I plan to work campus events, where you sometimes get free food,” she said.

Kasey Cox, a junior at the University of Michigan, brings a travel mug of coffee filled with her own home brew to the cafe she likes to study in and pretends she bought it there. She also frequently attends club meetings or seminars that provide refreshments, and she has an eagle eye for special offers. “On my birthday this year, I hit up five different places in town that give out free things or birthday deals,” she said.

Grigory Lukin, 25, the author of the 99-cent e-book “Going to College Without Going Broke,” recommends student clubs for more than the free food. When he was a student at the University of Nevada, Reno, he joined a community service club that held its annual meeting during spring break. “Our club had several sponsors, so we ended up paying just $20 each for a three-day weekend in a four-star hotel,” he said. “A lot of student clubs have these free, or almost free, trips, but they don’t like to advertise them for obvious reasons.”

According to Martin Dasko, 24, the founder of Studenomics, a Web site he started as a senior at Ryerson University in Toronto, there is no reason students should not be able to save money in college. “If students have time for Facebook and TV, they have time for a campus job,” he said. Mr. Dasko said his Web site gets between 1,000 and 2,000 hits a day, many of them from students asking about online jobs, like tutoring (for that, he recommends studentoffortune). “But I also get a lot of hits from students searching ‘free drinking’ and ‘how to date with no money,’ ” he said, laughing.

“Just get a job.” [57]

 

The study of Parenthesis reveals that it is as a multifaceted linguistic phenomenon embracing paradigmatically and syntactically heterogeneous units.

According to the semantic characteristics Parenthesis can be divided into the following groups: sequence, addition, personal or other people’s opinion, comparison, contrast, reinforcement, explanation, classification, alternative ideas, cause / reason, result, concluding.

Concerning structural characteristics of Parenthesis two important criteria should be taken into consideration: Syntactical and Morphological aspects.

In terms of syntax, Parenthesis can be presented as a single word, a phrase, a word combination, a sentence and it can be separated by commas, dashes or brackets.

In terms of morphology, Parenthesis can be expressed by viewpoint/comment adverbs, modal words, conjuncts, prepositional phrases, participle clauses, infinitive clauses.

As regards the analysis of positional peculiarities of the Parenthesis, it was investigated on two levels: on the sentence and text level. On the sentence level the Parenthesis can be embedded in the host syntactic structure at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. Similarly, on the text level Parentheses can occupy the initial, the mid- or final position.

The main functions assigned to Parenthesis are the following:

• to add figures or letters marking the division of a subject;
• to enclose words not directly relevant to the main topic of the sentence but too important to omit;
• to indicate an equivalent entity with parenthetical punctuation;
• to give examples, definitions, explanations, alternative ideas;
• to introduce personal opinion and attitude to some facts or events;
• to reinforce the sense of the whole context in the sentence;
• to show the reason, result, conclusion.

On the basis of newspaper articles the syntactic usage of different parenthetical types was researched. The results of the analysis lead to conclude that Parentheses indicating supplementary information, addition, background data, comments and personal opinion, definition and explanation of the facts, events are abundantly used in publicistic style. Parentheses expressed by stance adverbs qualifying a standpoint, including epistemic, evaluative and illocutionary adverbs, are characterized by the highest frequency of occurrence in the texts analysed, which can be regarded as a prominent characteristic of the language of newspapers.

This structural type of Parenthesis is overwhelmingly dominant over the other structural types discussed in the paper.

Another conspicuous feature of newspaper style is an extensive use of parenthetical clauses. They are intended to either show one’s personal attitude to or opinion of what is being said, or direct attention to what is being said. Such clauses may be patterned like different communicative types of sentences or clauses – statements, questions, imperative or exclamatory sentences or clauses. Pragmatically, the embedded structure acquires a secondary status, informing the reader of the author’s opinion of the utterance, or containing some comment on the content of the embedding sentence, or else addressing the reader directly. The embedding structure is primary in importance and structurally independent.

Parentheses expressed by conjuncts, unlike stance adverbs and parenthetical clauses, serve to maintain a coherent point of view and mark semantic relationships between propositions expressed by different clauses, such as comparison, contrast, concession, reason, result, addition, enumeration, transition. Therefore, they perform a wide range of functions in the sentence: listing, enumerative, additive, summative, appositive, resultative (inferential), antithetic, concessive, temporal.

 

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