The Challenge

The story of American education is a great one: an inclusive system open to all, academic and economic successes of countless generations of immigrant children, and an outstanding university system with more Nobel laureate graduates than the world combined. Hidden from view, however, are the grim statistics of illiteracy and under achievement that afflict millions of Americans. According to the Department of Education's 1993 study, Adult Literacy in America ,the most recent portrait on the condition of literacy in this nation, tens of millions of adult Americans are functionally illiterate. Equally alarming is the academic performance of poor children who continue to achieve at lower rates than their wealthier classmates. Gaps are most evident between black students and white students. In 1996, black 17-year-olds had an average reading proficiency that was equal to that of white 13-year-olds (Sable,1998).

The realities of school failure have been a subject of inquiry and contention for many years. Sociologists and economists see failure as symptomatic of family disintegration and poverty. Critical theorists point to flaws in the political and historical context of schools. Conservative theorists point to external factors such as the erosion of standards that undermine the school's mission. Ethnographers look at how teacher's perceptions of student's abilities profoundly affect learning. Human learning specialists associate school failure with brain damage, attention deficits, or hyperactivity. Reading specialists key in on skill deficits.

Disagreements about the causes of school failure are rooted in different theoretical perspectives. For many years progressive theorists have argued that the goals of a democratic society are best advanced by equality of opportunity. Everyone in a just society has a chance to succeed. Given disparities, however, the only genuine way to assure equality is to treat all children equitably and with compassion. In this way, individual differences that mitigate learning are minimized. Conservative theorists scoff at this reasoning because they value a productive society in which competence advances the common good. Applied to education, standards, accountability, and scientific management are best ways to manage instruction. Children who do not keep up are defective.

Whereas progressives are concerned with assuring the success of every child, conservatives identify with practices that reward individual effort. It is no wonder we debate endlessly on who should succeed and who should fail in schools. We also cannot agree on what we should teach and how we should teach it. The educational profession continually swings back and forth between the two views articulated by the renowned psychologist, Erik Erickson close to 50 years ago. On one extreme, learning is considered to be an extension of adulthood. Children learn what they are told to learn and they learn it through direct instruction. The other extreme encourages children to concentrate on the things they like to do. This approach popularly understood as child-centered, makes learning an extension of the natural tendency of children to find out by playing. In this model learning is not the direct result of teaching but of purposive activity.

The conflict over school failure presents educators with a real dilemma. Progressive arguments can be overwhelming because they are frequently clouded in the politically strident language of Marxism, critical theory, and post modern deconstructivist thinking. Conservative rhetoric can be as difficult and intimidating especially when teachers are blamed for the drop in the American standard of living. Likewise, critics of pedagogical practices frequently point the finger of blame at each other.

Many teachers try to walk the middle line on matters of instruction. Still, it is no small irony to find them vilified as either incompetent or old-fashioned. They need to be able come to terms with the ethos of school failure. If the progressives are right, failure to accommodate individual differences is abusive and discriminatory. If the conservatives are right it is just as wrong to expect too little from children. The problem is to face the issue without succumbing to indifference or worse, the argument that those who fail, deserve what they get.

Answers are not readily found. Without an adequate understanding of the issues, many rely on past practices or easy rationalizations. The result is frequent politicization of the question, with undue reliance on quick fix solutions. California's recent adoption of compulsory phonics is good example.

Meanwhile, many intelligent children, especially from poor and working class families, slip further behind, drop out, never to fully develop their intellectual gifts and talents. Lost in the muddle of statistics and policy accusations and blame are the personal stories of individuals who fail in school. What happens to them?  How do their teachers, friends, and family relate to them? Do they get over their failure or does it influence their lives, identities, experiences, and participation in the social world?

The Context

Twenty five years ago, I read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. A few years later, I read Jonathan Kozel's Children of the Revolution . Both men had written about transformative literacy. Their point was simple: the starting and ending point of literacy is liberation from agencies that oppress the human spirit. I had often witnessed the oppression of the uneducated in the Caribbean during my years as a literacy worker. I wondered though, if their social and political analyses of illiteracy was geographic; after all, their perception of reality came from their work in Latin America. This was an important point for me and so I felt obliged to test their theories in a North American setting. I began to document the human side of illiteracy by talking with scores of men and women in adult education programs in Nashville, Tennessee. I developed a way to generate meaningful instructional materials based on the lives of adults. I also set up a prison literacy program in Nashville.

Following a summer of instruction, I asked participants to join me for a discussion about the program. One of the men who accepted my invitation had not been allowed to participate in the regular education class at the prison because he could not read or write. He came to our meeting with an aura of strength about him and a  smile that was strong and confident. At his elbow were several stories he had written. I asked him to tell me about them. He read me a story about growing up in rural Mississippi. He wrote it after his tutor, Lee, had read him an excerpt from Harry Crew's, Blood and  Grits. I asked him to tell me what happened. This is what he told me:
 
 

I asked Dave ( Dave was his cell mate) what was wrong with me, and he said I just need to learn a little more before I could do anything. So the next day Dave got me into a reading class, and the teacher did not mind that I could not read too good. He had me read some lines from a book and told me that I could read good and that it was a pleasure to be teaching me. That made me feel good, and also made me want to work twice as hard. This teacher was so good and nice that he did not seem like a teacher. This man seemed more like a friend that cares about someone that tries to learn. He handed me a book one day and read just a couple of lines out loud and knew that I liked it. He said that his girlfriend gave him the book and that he has not read it yet. But if I like the book I could read it if I would not let no one have it or lose It. So I left and went back to my unit and started  reading it and a week later I was finished with the book and gave it back. The teacher asked me if I liked it and to tell him about it so I began telling [him] about the book. And how it somehow changed me. Just a little. The teacher then told me that there was a good story inside of me and he wanted me to write a short story for him, so I wrote a story about prison and what I thought about it. And that story came right out of me. It was the first time I've ever written anything like that. So the next day I gave it to my teacher and he liked it, and said it was good, and that he wanted to read it to the teacher next door. So he did and she liked it. So then he told me that some day I might be able to write a book and be able to read as good as he can. This is all true. I don't know how to lie on paper and if I did I would not.

Thank goodness I had met Toby early in my education. Although poor, illiterate, and in prison, he seemed to know what Freire (1985) meant when he had written that  literacy is an ..."analysis of reality." I had never thought of this concept as a literacy worker so I was surprised to hear him tell me that Blood and Grits had changed him. What did he mean? In the process of talking with him, he told me he had identified with the anti-hero who had been victimized his entire life. Toby had felt out of place as well; now he realized he was no different than others. He was, in short, Harry Crews. Toby helped me understand something else about literacy and education: becoming literate was not a neutral act. Having read and written his experience, he discovered that his life mattered to someone. He simplified another concept for me. He had told me he didn't know ..."how to lie on paper, and if he did, he would not." I still remember feeling weak and Toby wise as I realized what he meant: literacy was not a codification of skills, but a moral act of truth telling. Everything in his literacy was from experience  because Lee had not sent him though contrived lessons. Toby had bypassed a 'becoming' stage of literacy by simply expressing his perception of the world.

I applied Toby's truths to a new literacy program I started in Maine. The first thing I did was de-emphasize the organic word approach (Amoroso, 1985) I had developed. Instead of having tutors mediate student  experience by writing books for them, I asked them to use Lee's words..."there is a good story inside you." The results were dramatic. Writers produced four books of stories and poems that ..."affirm[ed] and engage[d] their contexts, histories, and experiences" (Giroux, Note 1). As one of the tutors wrote in her journal, "This man has more than a story inside--he has a book."

Toby had shown me the secret to his literacy and it went through story telling that expanded and deepened experience. For the next 15 years I shared his words with my classes and my colleagues. Grants led to research and consultations locally, nationally, and internationally. I even contributed to the founding of two publications that published the stories of new literates.

Five years ago, I began to write a book about the ethos of school failure. The statistics that documented literacy failure were depressing. So were quick fix solutions. Missing was an integrated text that linked pedagogy, literacy, history, and social transformation. Remembering Toby's words, I set out to  dramatize the literacy histories of my family. I started in the middle by writing about my working class education. Then I reached back a century to my grandmother's arrival in this country. From there I branched out to the histories of my father's assimilation into American society, and the education of my first two children. I followed the stories with critical essays and possible solutions.

The book is nearly complete. Writing it has pleased me because it has given me access to my past, and has allowed me to express my experience. At the same time, writing it was not easy. When I started, I was unclear about my audience, and unskilled as a narrator. My first drafts were flat and ambiguous. Eventually, I learned to craft the ideas that were in my head. This web site offers chapter summaries and brief textual excerpts. They provide glimpses into my family's struggle to the right to have a voice. I hope they inspire readers to think about their own family literacy histories. Many of us are descended from immigrants; intergenerational stories give us a way to reconnect to our past.

The Response

I admit that taking a narrative, cultural, and historical approach to school failure is risky. After all, I offer little more than life experience. At the same time, stories capture subtle and complex nuances of experience that are not evident in controlled investigations. Moreover, the genre speaks directly to readers and is especially powerful in describing and interpreting roles in historical context.

My grandmother was a young, single woman full of hope when she sailed for America. Within ten years of her arrival, her dreams were shattered: widowed, barely literate in English, she had three young children to raise alone in a strange, inhospitable land. Her life was immensely harder than it had been before coming to America. Now she labored daily as a seamstress in a sweatshop, and at night toiled as a cleaning, lady scrubbing the floors of the county court house. It was tough, menial work that led no where. As she struggled, she could only think about her children and their future.

My father was her only son and he knew she wanted him to be successful. Her plea was to get an education so that he might work in an office. He tried to do well but like so many men of his generation, he failed in school. Later, he would become a skilled tradesman, and a responsible parent. Despite his low opinion of himself, he passed on to me the lessons his mother had taught him. He felt the answer to hardship lay in education. Every time he told me about his job, shipfitting in sub-zero temperatures deep inside the cold, black bowels of ships, I trembled. I promised him I would do well in school so that I would never have to suffer as he had.

 I conformed to every rule and regulation in school. I studied hard, did my homework, got my papers in on time. I did everything except read and write on my own. Like my father, I didn't think much about books except as school subjects. Fortunately, I changed my mind after reading a novel a friend had recommended. I read it quickly, and then turned to another. Before long I bought three more paperbacks with my own money. Books finally meant something to me. I graduated from high school, and studied literature in college.

I couldn't wait to give my first born the gift of literacy. By four, he was reading and writing on his own. By six, he had become a self-taught writer and illustrator, composing long and elaborate stories. He entered school independent, cooperative, and creative. By 10, his confidence had fallen apart. A highly imaginative youngster accustomed to learning on his own, he could not adjust to the product orientated focus of school.

Our stories interpret the historic and cultural roots, the social meaning, and the human cost of struggle in school. Failure is a social problem because learning does not take place in a vacuum. It is a psychological and economic problem because children who fail frequently become depressed and alienated and are less likely to find satisfying jobs than those who succeed. It is also an ethical problem that forces us to think about our obligations to the children we serve. For most of us, failure comes down to the search for a remedy. I ask hard questions about current practices, and offer reasons why they do not work. I also offer alternative techniques that are based on dialogical processes, not chemical stimulants or the tearing apart of language

This leads me to my final point. Since my family's story spans the 20th century, readers can see for themselves how schools have responded to children who fail. From my grandmother's landing on Ellis Island in 1905, to my son's matriculation at the end of the century, schools have tried to adapt to waves of poor immigrants, changes in the American economy, and the hegemony of the scientific method in decision making. Despite a hundred years of school expansion and reform, the historical record demonstrates that much has stayed the same. Hildreth wrote in 1936..."no feature of public education is more universal than failure." Sixty-four years later, many children continue to fail in school for the same reasons they did in the past: boredom, isolation, alienation, and the irrelevant demands of a curriculum that favor control over self-expression.

The Power of Literacy Histories

Chapter One describes the genesis of the text and provides a rationale for using family literacy histories to challenge the common myths about literacy and school failure. Short narratives that teach moral truths have been a popular teaching tool through out history. Writers like Kirkeguard, Kafka, and Camus have used them to communicate universal themes (Note 2). The first two stories in Prosaic Messages are told through real and imagined characters in the presence of a narrator. Although the narrator comments on developments and events, the analysis of reality is revealed more uniquely through dialogue and conversation. This means that the key to understanding the significance of the stories is found within the reader. The remaining two stories are told in the first person with greater attention to interpretation.

The Immigrant's Experience

 Following Chapter One, I drop back 100 years to sketch the educational history of my grandmother. My goal is to capture the hard life she led because her story inspired my own literacy development. When I began to write about her, however, I had little to go on. She was more mythic--strong, attractive, opinionated--than real because I had never talked with her about her past. What's more, my relative's memories were faint.  I did not know what was important to her or what she felt was good and bad and worthy of her attention. The following excerpt describes how I came to know her:

 
 

Reclaiming the Past

I asked my relatives to tell me what they knew about her life in Sicily. We talked about her marriage and her attitudes toward the government, priests, and teachers. We also talked about day to day details like if she ever laughed out loud in public or where she shopped for groceries. Charming anecdotes emerged from our conversations. I expanded the information by researching Sicilian family life. I used political and social histories, texts, newspaper clippings, songs, and interviews to better understand what her assimilation experience must have been like. To develop place and setting, I visited Ellis Island, her point of demarcation, and walked the neighborhoods she lived in. I also reflected intensely on one year in her life, 1912, trying to see it through her eyes. I learned that she came from a highly conservative, patriarchal family where men worked and women raised children, worshiped the saints, and socialized with family and close friends. I learned that she was a fair haired and blue eyed, rare features for a Sicilian woman. I discovered that she danced at church festivals and once met secretly with a young man in the lemon grove near her home. I even found out that she had worked in the Lawrence mills during the infamous strike of 1912.  She had come to this country just as science and technology, business and commerce were spreading a vast new social order over the landscape. Old boundaries about the way people related to each other were disappearing. This was a world filled with motion and change where subways, automobiles, and mass communication altered the notion of place.  I imagined her stepping into this moment of history and nearly fainting. Urban slums filled with broken windows and exhaust fumes replaced her blue seas and ancient ruins. Men and women worked hard in factories and died early. Others clamored for fair wages, and humane working conditions. Priests didn't speak her language or promote her saints but padrones did. Billboard posters told her to watch brawny men play a child's game. Other images told her that romantic love was not wrong as others marched for moral reform and equal voting rights.  I easily imagined her trying to run away from this bewilderment of conflict and change. She was not alone. Social institutions like schools faced similar problems. In New York City for example, schools offered needy children free eyeglasses and morning baths even as they tested them for mental retardation. Policy makers pushed for compulsory attendance, unionization of teachers, and special classes for children who were judged to be unmanageable. Men like Edward Thorndike, John Dewey, Howard Bagley and G. Stanley Hall argued constantly over the best ways to motivate children and measure their progress. Women like Jane Addams opened settlement homes to meet the social and educational needs of poor working people and their children.  I had set out to discover my grandmother in the hope that her life would illuminate my own. She had left the Mediterranean world powerless and unguarded. I found her out of place, without English, in the most turbulent of times. Undeterred, she found work in the mills of Lawrence Massachusetts, and learned to read and write English. Working under horrible work conditions, she joined the infamous labor strike of 1912. Shortly thereafter, she married but was on her own with three young children following the death of her husband.  It was a life filled with hardship and sorrow. And yet she triumphed. Her strength was in the stories from the past. They had given her a moral sense and had disciplined her. Her legacy to me was the way she had lived her life, and I decided to share it with others. I drew upon colors--the brilliant yellow flowers and blue seas of her youth with the gray skies and black streets of her adulthood--to symbolize the differences in her experience. I delved into her relationships because they allowed me to comment on her attitude toward life in a moral and ironic way. I fictionalized parts of the Lawrence Strike to show the power of her insight.  I am the first to admit to distortion. The plot twists and dialogues I invented with reformers like John Dewey and Jane Addams did not happen. Yet, they have a purpose and are pleasurable to read.  We rarely see the poor going head to head with artists or intellectuals. That is because the cultural elite rarely socialized with the people they studied or wrote about.  In my version of the strike, my grandmother befriends Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman. They talk and drink and eat, exchanging generalizations about race, religion, and class in America. She listens, and compares her simple, core beliefs with theirs. What better way to demonstrate her intelligence than to let her speak for herself?  Like them, she was quick sighted, principled, and tough minded. Unlike them, she did not make it to the history books. For this reason, her story demands to be told.

Rose's story begins in Sicily, an ancient land filled with long-suffering people. Against the wishes of her father, John, she wants to leave for the mills of New England. John relents provided she not marry. She agrees and departs without money, status, or a formal education, only faintly aware of the moral and emotional crises that await her. She settles in Lawrence Massachusetts, finds work in the mills, and keeps to herself. Overwhelmed by hostile working conditions, sexual advances, and the painful separation from her parents, she seeks inspiration in the stories of the saints.

Interspersed throughout the plot are real and imagined characters who represent conflict in her life. There's Dumanlo the local paisano who fantasizes about her. She rooms with Marina, an affectionate and emotional Sicilian seamstress who will do anything to succeed in the country she loves. She befriends Carmelo, Gulizia's brother in law and a dreamy idealist who entertains her with song and stories. Her struggles reach a climax as Lawrence descends into the chaos of a labor strike. Because she is literate in Italian, the strike leaders ask her to write a letter to union leaders in New York. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the fiery radical who fills audiences with moral indignation against the rich and powerful, arrives from New York City and enters her life.

 

The Promise

In 1905, my father's mother, Rose Bosco came to America with her younger brother Sebastian. The Boscos were born in Melilli, a small village on the southeastern coast of Sicily. The capital of the province was Siracusa, an important city-state in the ancient Greek world, and the gateway to Sicily. Wealthy landowners lived in the distant hills.  Change came slowly to this part of the world. The poor rarely moved beyond the fields they tended with broad bladed hoes. The Bosco family was different. Their father was highly skilled mason who had built many homes in and around Melilli. Like Sicilian men of his generation, he was a tough task master who had a reputation for severity. Since the death of his youngest son Nino, he had become even more of a tyrant, hurling stones and insults at anyone who crossed him.  Rose's eldest sister, Josephine, was the first to leave. She married a local boy and left for America. Concetta, the father's favorite, entered the convent. Angered by constant criticism, the eldest son Antonio sailed for Egypt to work on the Suez Canal.  My grandmother was born in 1883 and graduated with a few years of schooling, the endpoint of Italian public education, with an ability to read and write in standard Italian. Until she left for America, she helped around the house and in the fields. She recalled fondly joining her brothers with the harvest of the olive and lemon crops on the Camprini Estate, six miles to the northwest.  At the turn of the century, Sicily was an agrarian economy with limited economic prospects for women. My grandmother was not alone in believing that she could make something more of herself by leaving. She had listened to the stories of Josephine's success in America. Antonio had encouraged her to leave as well. He sent her enough money to buy a one-way passage on the great ships that left Siracusa twice a day, bound for New York.  When she approached her father with the idea of sailing to the new world, he turned her down with a flick of his wrist. He loved her very much, and he was afraid of never seeing her again. He knew from the local gossip what might happen to her in America. Without a father to protect her, strangers might take advantage of her, bringing shame to the Bosco family.  He would never allow her to leave home. John Bosco was a resourceful man though, sensible enough to realize that his daughter was more of an asset than a liability. At 22, head strong and ambitious, she could take care of herself and might be able to earn enough money to support him. She remembered the walk with him through the pine grove to the overlook, one hundred feet above the sea. Rain had slickened the gravel so she tried not to look down to where the white waves washed ashore.  "Rosina," he said looking straight ahead. "I have changed my mind about America. I will let you go providing you keep four promises.     "Yes, Pa. I am listening."      "First, you must take Sebastian with you."     "Pa. Sonny's like the peretto that grows on the hill. He always has the bitter face. Only a mother could love him. "      "Do not speak that way about your brother. Si la matri nn'avissi centu, Nuddu nni vurrissi a lu mulimentu! A mother loves every one of her children. Sebastian is spoiled but he will be my eyes and ears. I want you to be a good girl in America. You are different from the others. Your skin is white like the Easter lily. Your eyes bite the souls of men. Only God knows where you came from."      "I will never marry. Not even with your blessing. I was in love once, but never again. Once was too much."      "Rosina the world of men will take advantage of you. Take Sebastian with you. Return home in ten years as you are. I do not want to have grandchildren running around in filthy rags and with wild heads of hair. Third, go to Middletown. Many of our friends from Mellili live there. Josephina's husband will help you find work."      "Pa, I don't get along with her. We'll fight all the time."      " Keep your thoughts to yourself, and send me your savings. Who else can look after your mother and me? Antonio and Sebastian will soon have their own families to raise. Your mother and I are alone. You are the only one who can care for us in our old age."  She agreed to his terms with little resistance. She had no intentions of marrying anyone in America or any place for that matter. If she could have had her own way, she would have gone into the convent just like her sister.  When she and Sebastian boarded the steamer that bright morning in June of 1905, she came face to face with the reality of leaving home. Admittedly, life had been a struggle. Her father and brothers had never been able to find steady work for more than three or four months at a time. They frequently had to take what they could find. That meant walking long distances to and from work for a day's wages of 35 cents, enough to buy bread for the family. The struggle of growing up as a woman was even more difficult. No matter how intelligent she was, the old ways prevented her from developing her abilities. Her life had been confined to domestic work of a late 19th century Sicilian woman: spinning flax, fetching water, cooking, and cleaning.  She could not even take pleasure walking to church. For one thing, the Sicilian sun was exacting: six months of blazing heat, parched earth, and dust followed by months of rain and mud. Furthermore, centuries of tradition demanded she be chaperoned wherever she went. Decent girls were never alone with a man.  As she settled into the ship's cramped and foul smelling steerage, wave after wave of nostalgia swept over her: Josephine's wedding; the sweet fragrance of jasmine; baby Nino's baptism; holding hands with her mother in their garden of the almond blossoms; the feast day of St. Joseph's. Life had been difficult but it moved across the landscape in steady and enduring ways. Relatives married and children were baptized. Priests said Mass in Latin, a language spoken on Sicily since the time the Roman armies of General Marcus Claudius Marcellus besieged Siracusa. Every time she walked to her aunt Marchesi's, she cut across the white, dusty path near the elegant temple of Megara, built by Greek colonists 2500 years before. Even the October rains drenched the fields every October in time-honored ways. They nourished the almond trees, the citrus groves, the olives, the grapes and the endless variety of greens that grew wild in the fields behind her house. The fresh soups her mother made from wild asparagus and fennel were a welcome treat to the bread and pasta eaten during the dry season.  My grandmother had grown up in an ancient land where change came slowly. Greek, Roman, Muslim, Norman, and Spanish civilizations had risen and fallen.  For her, however, the past was not a historical abstraction. It was the source of her unhappiness. She had grown up in a conservative, restricted society. She had been raised to be a good daughter and a future wife: careful, obedient, and cautious. She had never been on her own. Her parent's permission was required to do practically everything. Aside from her priest and her cousins, brothers and father, she had never talked to a man alone. Her family, her church, and 2,000 years of tradition had enforced a strict morality on her.  It seems little in her upbringing prepared her for what she was about to encounter. When she arrived at Ellis Island in New York harbor, the chaos set her head spinning--red brick and steel, noise, congestion and unintelligible people oblivious to her. She found herself in a madhouse of people pushing and shoving her. The public display of rudeness alarmed her, and it made her want to cry but she could not to retreat back into her memories. She was here to better herself and so she had to learn to break through her fear. Thank goodness her father had arranged with Josephine and her husband to have a room and a job waiting for her as soon as she arrived in Middletown, 100 miles to the northeast. Blocking out her terror, she purchased railway tickets, and left for New England within hours of landing on Manhattan Island.

This chapter is a metaphor for Rose's education. She chaperones children of striking workers to New York City with Elizabeth and her friend Marina. On the way to the city, the women talk about historical development, social and economic justice, and the education of children. Rose is particularly straightforward in questioning the tenets of Elizabeth's progressivism. In New York, Elizabeth introduces her to some of the greatest activists of the era: the anarchist Emma Goldman, John Dewey and Francis Parker founders of American progressivism, the social worker Jane Addams, and the novelist Theodore Drieser. As in a Greek drama Rose stands opposite a chorus, and engages in dialogue. The activists speak to her about big business, political corruption, freedom, and identify. The powers of scientific observation, not religious belief, they argue, hold the key to the future. Rose wonders if their future will work. Will children be taught equitably if American schools adopt Dewey's principals? Are art and literature the best way to raise the consciousness of the mill owners toward poverty and human suffering? Can Goldman's vision of a just society be trusted if freedom negates obligation? Whose vision is the truest? Rose listens, affirms their ideological passions, but moves on, confident in her simple, principled life.

The dialogues are significant because they bring to life the people who charted the course of schools and society in twentieth century America. Some readers will find them plodding and suspicious. After all, unimportant historical figures like Rose almost never discussed aesthetic, political, or philosophical principles with intellectuals. Ironically, it is easy to forget she is the perfect witness to her time. In assimilating into American life, she had to choose between sharply divided ideologies: capitalist materialism or social justice: the rights of the individual or obligations to others: scientific progress or faith in the sacred, ethnic isolation or assimilation in to the dominant culture. Although she was unable to read history or political thinking, she used other methods to find her way. We see her in full voice: smart, serious, and unsparing of her contemporaries. Giving history back to her reminds us that her literacy was not found in her ability to read and write English, but in the way she responded to moral crises.

 

Rose Bosco and Emma Goldman on Freedom and Obligation

"You just came from the strike. I bet the the Governor of Massachusetts owns stock in your mill. He gets rich off of you. No wonder he sent out the troops. He wanted to protect his  property. More important, he does not care about you. You are a cog in a wheel meant to make him rich. He wants to keep you in your place. It is the same with the president of Harvard. Rose, you have an obligation to fight against abuse. Join me. Leave the mill. We need women like you. Together we can end your enslavement."      Rose answered sincerely. "Emma I am deeply honored that you think me capable. But you have not listened to a single word I have said. I cannot get up in front of people. I am shy. The best I can do is stay put."      "You have a life to live," Emma replied. "You need to free yourself from your past. Your church demands too much. You have to do what is right for yourself, not what others want you to do. You support your parents in their old age. Look what it is doing to you. You are weary. Once you cut  away, your energies will be released."     "I am obliged to my family," Rose said as if talking to someone else.      Emma remained silent for a moment and then said, "It is not right. You give but you never receive. Your suffering is not of your own doing. You are caught in a trap laid by others."      Rose responded with a single sentence, "My family raised me with their work and their good habits."      "There is a higher virtue than duty. It is called freedom. You are a woman who has the right to become her own person."      "I know who I am. I know what is right and wrong".      "You are not free," Emma explained. "You live far from your old village yet it suffocates you. Have you felt a man in your arms?"      "No," Rose said very calmly. "Men cannot make me happy."     "It is not sinful to think about men. Your father is far away. "      Rose remembered her promise as she looked out on the street where children were running wild like donkeys. Her eyes moistened as she moved her head away. "That is wrong Emma. I gave him my word."      "Put yourself first. And for God's sake, make love to a man before the machines weaken your thighs."     "I cannot make such a promise."     " All right Rose," Emma said as if she were a matron in a rocking chair. "Women write to me all the time. They tell me how empty their lives are. I tell them the same thing as I am telling you."       Rose wept in secret, and she felt an urgent need to end the conversation. "Emma," she said, fixing her blues eyes directly on her, "I know you do not favor money and fame."      " Emma's voice turned gruff. Rose had opened the door wide. "That is correct. I consider them most dismal failures. I am devoted to the triumph of anarchism in my life time."      Rose seemed to be pointing to a hill far of in the distance. "I too have a path to follow. It is a rocky one but it leads to the salvation of my soul. I won't step away from it. "

Rose Bosco and John Dewey On the Nature of Good Teaching

"Give a cheer for the girls. Marina, you are a true woman," Emma joked. But there's another explanation about these special classes. The state abhors freedom. Massachusetts has laws that forbid teachers to marry or live wherever they want. Schools are a tool of the state. Their job is to enforce conformity. Does anyone seriously think politicians and businessmen want schools that teach children to think?"      Parker smiled and said, " It is not easy to teach the sons of men who labor in silence. "      "Emma wanted to correct this old romantic. "That is nonsense, and I will tell you why. Last year I went into the mines to read Ibsen to the workers. They understood it. Jane is right. Workers have the same capacity to think about their history, religion, and cultural heritage as the rich."      " I agree with each of you," said Dewey." But equality is not a universally held sentiment. We are fighting against history. Plato said it first and best: only the brightest should be educated. He regarded the education of all others  to be superfluous. Elitism is an especially dangerous idea in a democracy because each citizen must participate in the running of the government.  Horace Mann understood this when he pushed for free schools in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the shear numbers of immigrant children in our schools today  undermine his vision. We cannot teach children who don't speak English or who don't want to be in school. That is why so many schools have adapted scientific testing to separate deficient children from more capable ones."      Rose turned to respond. "Elizabeth and I spoke about  tests on the train. Just because you can't write your name doesn't mean you are backward."      "That's my point too," Emma said. But the rich and powerful want us to think that way. They don't want workers to think. Does the general want his soldiers to question his authority?"      Dewey smiled sympathetically for he had written about this subject many times. "Teachers need to train children how to think."      Parker elaborated by saying, "Teachers need the right tools to do that. Years of observation have convinced me that schools have failed to educate children because teachers use the wrong materials. Children still read stories about Elsie, Jimmie, and Fannie who live in homes with fireplaces and spend idle hours popping corn. These are children who walk along polished wooden floors to their own rooms to play with dolls, and teach tricks to their dogs.  The stories are a lie. Adults sit in rocking chairs, knitting or reading or speaking pleasantly to their children. They serve them snacks, and take them on trips to the woods for Saturday afternoon picnics. Mothers also take them on adventures. Days are filled with idyllic walks in clean, white aprons past posted fences, old trees, and flowers. The children play with the farm animals, pick flowers, picnic in meadows, and gaze into clear running brooks. They also take trips to the seashore. Childhood is a time of discovery under the watchful eye of a benevolent mother.  I only wish life was this way. Too many children live in crowded flats with tired, angry parents, their formative years filled with neglect and boredom. Besides, the books are filled with too many difficult words and too many phonetic markings. It is no wonder the children sink into despair as soon as they open them. The books defeat them."    Parker continued. "Textbook companies have lost sight of a simple fact that they are writing for children. Ironically, they hire superintendents to produce them. Most were men without any experience teaching young children. This means they cannot see things as the child does. So what do they do?  They create texts filled with words covered with  marks and crossed out vowels in the hope that children will learn how to pronounce them.. It's so scientific. And so wasted. What they don't realize is that children will only read stories that interest them."      It was Rose's turn once again. "I am puzzled. You want all children to go to school." Her friends smiled as they nodded slowly. "And you want teachers to train them how to think."      "You understand perfectly," Dewey said, wanting to get away from using a pedantic tone with her.      Staring at her water glass, Rose said, "This does not make sense."      "Miss Bosco," Parker said. " Do our ideas appear to be extravagant?"      " I live in America," she said with no emotion. You do too. You mentioned that  you grew up in a clean homes with mothers who read to you in their laps."      "Yes," Emma shrugged with a hint of irony. "Our good middle class families gave us a bourgeoisie education."      "None of you grew up poor in rags, or dirty and tired from sleeping in a crowed bed. You grew up like the children in Mr. Parker's book. If I have children, I will not be able to give them what your mothers gave you. They will have nothing. That is a fundamental difference. You want teachers to do that."      Addams knew immediately that Rose was right. That is because she lived in Rose's world. Yet, she felt the need to defend the promise of progress embedded in her associate's thinking. She said, " Rose, you  are right  to speak about mothers. In fairness to John, it is too soon to know if his ideas will work."      " He will fail," she said with certainty. "Only a mother can love her children. Teachers cannot  love my children. Your parents taught you from their hearts. If you care about my children, find a way to keep me home with them."      A dark cloud passed over Dewey's face. "That's  Emma's and Elizabeth's fight. My job is to make sure all children learn from  properly trained teachers."      With great dignity she replied, "Mr. Parker told us that as soon as he left Quincy, his teachers went back to the old ways."      "Science will fix this problem," he said confidently.      "Rose squinted at him as she asked, "Have you ever heard of St. Bosco?"      "Can't say that I have," he said reflectively.     "He cared for the poor so much, he set up homes for them. "      "The same with Pestalozzi and Montessori," Parker blinked. "This is what I told my teachers in Quincy. You need to care about children first and foremost."       Dewey rose he voice slightly. "I expect teachers to love children, Miss Bosco. But nurturing is not enough. The truth is that teaching someone is very difficult when you don't know how to do it."      "Rose's shy demeanor gave way to a truth she carried in her experience. "On the train, Elizabeth asked me about Sicily. She listened to every word I said. She asked me more questions. Before  I knew it, I learned things that made me feel proud. I felt smart like I was her sister. She inspired me with love."

Rose returns from NYC, an independent woman determined to continue her education. Her obligation to remain unmarried ends with her father's death. Filled with longing, she marries Carmelo, and settles into a prosaic life in Boston's North End. The newlyweds react to their surroundings in different ways. Rose's aesthetic sense draws her to the traditions and architecture of the city. Carmelo looks around and sees a future filled with friendships. Tender moments give way to tense ones as Rose's sense of sin and Carmelo's whimsy push them apart. In the end, she demands that they move to Quincy to be near her brother and village friends. Carmelo relents and finds work in the shipyard. Seven years later he is dead.

 The North End is a story about place, courtship, and marriage. It is also a testament to the immigrant's capacity to respond to a bewildering array of challenges. In order to reveal the significance of Rose and Carmelo's assimilation into American culture, ordinary experiences are probed for meaning. A stare becomes an opportunity to examine the roots of bigotry in New England. An imagined encounter with Rose Kennedy, a native of the North End, leads to an analysis of class differences in education and child rearing. Commonplace moments in church or in an embrace reveal much about changes in consciousness.

At its deepest level, The North End is a critique of literacy and intelligence. The common definition of literacy is competence to read and write. Behind this definition is the assumption that adults who cannot read are passive, empty vessels, incapable of thinking for themselves. In light of my grandparent's story, this is an illusion. Rose and Carmelo understood what was going on around them and knew exactly what to do. Their literacies are revealed in how they lived their lives.

 

Transitions

Before heading home, my grandfather walked over to Copp's Hill for a smoke. This evening a stiff breeze carried to him the loud cries of the neighborhood kids as they jumped off the pier. He smiled as he lit his small pipe. Across the street, a steel framed destroyer eased out of its berth to the sound of a Sousa march. Sailors in white military caps stood at attention. The music caused him to stiffen, its sound making him feel vulnerable. Across the harbor was the Bunker Hill Monument, fashioned from massive blocks of granite from Quincy. To his right was the U.S.S.. Constitution, still rigged for maneuvers. Both were sacred symbols of Boston's militaristic past. The city had a gloomy and heartless look about it, sheathed in gray light and dark stone. Unlike his beloved Mineo, there were no white and yellow flowers or orange blossoms or wild mint that sent people outside to laugh or talk over their affairs. Bostonians passed their time behind closed doors watching the strokes of the clock with crooked frowns on their faces. In Mineo, neighbors sat outside to watch the last rays of sun give way to bright moonlight. When Bostonians ventured outside, they did so alone, with a look of determination, their hands over their eyes so as not to see old churches. Year round in Mineo, Carmelo and his friends came to the grand square to womanize or listen to the larks whistle in the shadows of magnificent Baroque structures and distant mountains.  Two women passed by. "I boil mines and cover them with melted butter," one said to the other. Carmelo  shook his head wondering how Americans could derive pleasure from eating dull food. He picked up his hat and gloves, and started home thinking of Rose as she crumbled a fresh bay leaf into the simmering sauce. He smiled, strengthened by thoughts of eating well tonight.  Sicilian masons were busily covering up the granite cemetery wall with red brick. The barking of a dog startled him as he passed through the shadows of tenement houses built by Irish masons from the same brick. Ahead of him was a helpless looking colonial dwelling used as a club house by neighborhood boys. Fearful of their mothers' eyes, they came here to smoke and play cards. At the top of the hill he paused a moment to stare at the tall, elegant spire atop the old church. He was unaware that the two lanterns hung in its belfry on the night of April 18, 1775 had set off the War for American Independence.  Carmelo had worked on the restoration of the Old North Church for the past two months. He was the one who had found an old hymnbook behind a boarded up window. He had given it to his supervisor, the Italian heretic who called himself a Waldensan. As he walked down the center of the narrow street, a tiny woman peered out at him, her white head barely visible above the glass. She seemed to smile at him. Carmelo shrugged, thinking how the weeds in her yard managed to grow without sunlight. She was one of the last Bostonians in the North End. Her father and grandfather had been ship builders. She remembered the clipper launchings down at the harbor. She also remembered the wealthy Anglicans who worshiped at the Old North Church. They stopped coming soon after Irish immigrants arrived. She looked at Carmelo thinking he was one of the Jews who had settled in her neighborhood.  The old Yankees had departed years before. Many resettled in the luxury townhouses built on top of reclaimed land in the Back Bay. Before long, their colonial churches and elegant homes decayed, and were torn down to make way for four story tenements. Local officials were alarmed by the influx of so many illiterate immigrants. Horace Mann, head of the State Board of Education, urged the Commonwealth to act quickly to educate their children. Free public education he pointed out, was the best way to preserve the republic from the "giant vices which now invade and torment [us]" Politicians agreed and funded the common school movement.  The children enrolled in the new schools, but many dropped out. Mann advised his teachers to adapt their teaching to the interests of the students. They tried, but the children still failed. In 1848, he left for Washington, D.C. to fill the Congressional seat vacated by John Quincy Adams's death. Time passed and Francis W. Parker, the originator of the Quincy Plan was hired to turn things around. Parker failed as well, and left for Chicago to head the Cook County Normal School, and to eventually collaborate with John Dewey at the University of Chicago.  By the time Carmelo arrived in the North End, the colonial texture of the neighborhood had disappeared. Unknown to him, old Puritan ways of thinking had not vanished. The phantoms of discrimination were especially dangerous to the achievement of the neighborhood children. Mindful that the North End had become an immigrant enclave, the Boston School Committee built a new school next to Copp's Cemetery, hallowed ground where Cotton Mather and many of Boston's original settlers were buried. The school was big, and it was named after an Italian. Local politicians were pleased, but it did little to slow school failure. Success was still outside the grasp of most children.

Chapter Five profiles the life of a school drop out in depression era America. Like many other sons of immigrant parents, my father made it through grammar school but stopped going to high school as soon as he turned 16. Restless and motivated by the need to support his family, school did not interest him because his only goal in life was to have a few dollars in his pocket. Away from school, he built bicycles, walked miles to tend his father's grave, and worked several jobs to support his sisters and mother. Later in life he became a highly skilled craftsman and responsible parent.

Children continue to fail in school for the same reasons. Many of us label them irresponsible, unaware of their unique identities in the social world. The purpose of this story is to remind readers that personalized histories negate harmful stereotypes attached to children who fail in school

 

An Unusual Education

Rose awoke upset over the name calling. Very few Sicilian-American children went to St. John's Parochial School. Connie was the only one in her class. The rest were Irish. One classmate teased her constantly by calling her the Welfare Kid. Every day at  recess, a gang of boys sat up on the rocks waiting to shout 'Guinea' at my father.  Rose knew these words from her early days in America. She had never paid any attention to them. Now, there was much to think about. How could her children learn to love themselves with these words? She remembered the time she told Carmelo she wanted her children to know who they were. This was not happening on Water Street. Instead of doing his school work, Henry ran off with his Italian and Jewish friends to play at Smith's Field. Sports were his passion. Connie's spirit was elsewhere, too. She hardly spoke to her in Sicilian any more. The world of school and name calling pressed on Rose's conscience. She sighed and knew deep down her children needed to be around Sicilian men who were making it and children who were doing well in school. She decided to take them along to Boston when she returned her piecework. They would meet accomplished people like Gulizia, Carmelo's cousin, and perhaps one of her union friends. And there was the Old World heritage of the buildings she had found in Boston--the magnificent ones that reminded her of home.      "Get ready," she said fretfully to my father. "I need to bring back my homework." She called the linens she sewed for wealthy Americans, 'home work.'      "Ma,  please", he begged. He had three games to play that day. Henry's whining irritated her the most. All he wanted  to do was hang out with friends. He was just like his father--never a care in the world. " We have fish to buy, so get ready."  The train stopped at South Station. There were crowds everywhere. Henry had never heard so much squabbling. As they approached Salem Street he saw a sign painted in Italian. He had never seen one before, so he asked his mother what it said. "That's a shoe store for Italian men with tiny feet."      Unblinking he smiled at the thought of little men happily walking up and down the street in their new shoes. He stood at the curb ready to cross. "Not yet," she said." I want you to meet some one."  She was referring to Gulizia. It was early June, but the heat was unbearable. Kids were shirtless, playing ball in the street. He knew their faces but not their names. He caught a glimpse of a boy crying. All around him were spilled strawberries. Before the boy stood the store owner with a strap in his hand. Dad could see the fury in the man's face and hear the crack of the strap on the boy's arm. He turned away, smelling the sweat of the street. He felt perturbed. Baseball was supposed to be played on green fields surrounded by trees that touched the sky. Cards were meant to be played on flat boulders beside a brook. Boston's streets were mean and he didn't like them.  Gulizia's music store was ahead of him. The door was open so Rose and Dad walked in. The professor was in the back testing a student. Rose told my dad to sit on a chair in the corner. He obeyed because he did not want to get smacked. As he passed the glass case, he caught sight of a bright, silver harmonica. Rose and Gulizia exchanged pleasantries. This was the first time she had seen him since the funeral. She was grateful that he had come. His presence had lent an air of dignity to the service. For a moment she shut her eyes. It was too painful to remember the weeping. Carmelo had been the spirit of the neighborhood.  Rose had gotten older in the past year, her blue eyes drained of emotion. Before Gulizia could say another word, she asked him to teach Dad to sing. He frowned as he studied Henry sitting alone in the corner. Too skinny--no depth in the eyes--too distracted. An American customer entered the store and so Gulizia motioned to my father. Standing formally, he addressed the little fellow: "You have a good mother. I told her not to marry your father, but she didn't listen to me. Now you are the man of the house. Don't be afraid to work with your back."      Dad was only eight years old and so the words paralyzed him. He also smelled the inside of Gulizia's mouth and pushed back. Gulizia grabbed his arm and brought him closer." It is time to put food on the table." He turned to Rose and said, "He is not a singer. His chest is too small and he lacks determination. "  This made Rose unhappy, but she understood it had to be this way. After all, Gulizia had to pay rent and she had no money. It was time to leave, so she took her son's hand and wished the professor good by. Gulizia slipped something into Dad's pocket as he passed by. It was an inexpensive harmonica.      "Can we get the tuna now Ma?"      "No, not just yet. We are going to visit your father's cousin. He has a bakery shop. His daughter won a prize for science." Henry hated smart girls. They were too conceited with their hands raised all the time.   He'd rather stand in the hall than sit next to one at school. His thoughts turned to the harbor; the vista gray and windy.     "We have to take the ferry to East Boston," Rose told him. The North Ferry left Battery Wharf on Commercial Street so they walked over to catch it.  Ten minutes later, they docked at Border Street. Dad did not know that his father had stared out onto these waters the day he decided to move to Quincy. He knew little about his father because his mother concealed her thoughts about him. In a few minutes, the ferry docked, and they were in the living room of his father's cousin. He  saw his mother smile as she caught up on people's lives.  Saldana came out of her room as soon as she heard the chatter. She stood in front of Henry and pushed back her black, curly hair. She was twelve, and her breasts were beginning to push against her blouse. Henry turned to look at his mother. He was beaming as he heard his cousin say, " I didn't know I had such a handsome cousin." Grabbing his hand she said, "Let's go meet my friends."      Rose shook her head. Henry was in pain. "It's too cold over here, " he replied feebly. "It's much warmer in the city."      "Saldana giggled and answered, "That's because the buildings block out the wind."      Rose was glad to see that Henry was learning something. He needed to be around a higher class of people. "Listen to her son. You will learn something from her."      Dad blushed. Rose motioned with her hand to sit beside her. She spoke rapidly in Sicilian so he was not sure what she was saying. Saldana stood behind him and whispered, "Three men want Pa to pay them protection money. Your mother told Pa to watch out or they will shoot him."      Dad sat transfixed by his uncle's long, black mustache. Lifting his hand, the man spoke in a serious tone. Dad understood him because he used a  mixture of English and Sicilian. "I 've carried a gun on my shoulder. It is worth more than the images of the saints. " He sliced the air again with his long finger. "Besides, big dogs quarrel over a good bone. I have no bones to give these scoundrels."  Henry stirred with the picture of his uncle shooting good for nothing rats in a hole. This was a man who could build fine castles. He wished he slept here with his mother. Whenever he got into a scrap, he would know what to say: 'Uncle Carmino will come for you.'      It was a mortal sin to speak about sex in front of children. Saldana's mother, Carlena, had a reputation for speaking the forbidden. She and Rose had discussed the subject the night before Rose's wedding. 'Take notice of my words,' she said. 'Sex depends on your priest. If you like it too much, tell him that you will send your first born to the seminary. He will forgive you.'      Carlena knew that Rose needed a husband to think about. "Rose. You look lost. There are so many men to care for you. Remember the man who led the band? He is a good man. Open your heart to him. You have paid your debt to Carmelo."      Rose wasn't thinking of marrying anyone. " Are you the devil tempting me? I will never let another man lay a hand on me."     Everyone fell silent. Thinking he was a big person, Dad jumped up and said, "Ma chased away the priest. He came last week. She slammed the door in his face."      Poor Rose was speechless. "This boy will make me grow old. He has no fear of God." When they returned to the North End, they went straight to the fish market. It was past noon, and the best tuna steaks had been sold out. Rose sensed Henry's disappointment, so she said, "We can't do anything. But I have a mouth to feed. Your father took me to an American restaurant nearby. I don't have enough to buy you and your sisters beans and bread for the week, but today you will eat. So wash that sad face away."  Despite his size, Dad felt he could touch the tower atop the Custom House. He even forgot about Gulizia's mouth. He was the apple of his mother's eye, and he was going to eat like a prince today.      After lunch, they walked over to Lambert Street to deliver the linens. When Lipman saw Rose, he clapped his hands and said, "Mrs. Amoroso, your patron is here. She's wanted to meet you for the longest time." Standing in his office was Rose Kennedy with her two boys, Joe and Jack. She had brought them along to buy new suits at Kennedy's. Joe was  reading a book; Jack stared at Henry's Salvation Army shoes. The  Kennedy boys reminded my father of the boys he went to school with in Quincy--very fit, nicely dressed, and well fed.      Ready for excitement, Jack  said to him, "Want to see something?"      "Sure," Dad replied. He knew it was time to have some real fun. Together, they snuck past Joe who could not put his book down.      "Mrs. Kennedy this is your seamstress, Mrs. Amoroso," Lipman said, knowing Rose's lack of status did not offend Mrs. Kennedy.      "You do exquisite work," Mrs. Kennedy said to my grandmother. She was a remarkably beautiful, radiant, and confident woman. Rose Amoroso's beauty was hidden beneath the grief of the past year. Mrs. Kennedy asked my grandmother what all American women asked her. "How did you you learn to sew so magnificently?" Many educated Americans did not realize that foreigners had a past.      "My mother," Rose smiled.      "My mother taught me things, too. I learned more from my father though--opera and of distant places."      My grandmother replied," My father took me to the opera when I was a young girl. You've done a lot of traveling?"      "Indeed, to Europe. I hang copies of famous paintings I saw in Europe (Note 3) The pictures over my son's beds are copies of Italian paintings of the Madonna and Child. They give me great pleasure."      "I am glad you told me that. I have a statue of the Madonna in my bedroom." Mrs. Kennedy nodded wondering where Jack went.      My grandmother noticed that Joe was still reading his book, so she said, "My daughter is very smart. She reads all the time. I can't get her out of her room to help me."      "Let her read Mrs. Amoroso. That is what we do. We spend a lot of time with books in the living room in the evening. Mr. Kennedy  is president of a bank and this is his one opportunity  to read the newspaper or his favorite detective stories. He sits in his red chair  reading the Boston Transcript. I sit opposite him. When the children are ready for bed and have said their prayers they come  to the living room and play for a little while before we  put them to bed. I spend a good deal of time reading  to my  children. I make no engagements outside in the  evening so that I can help them with their school work, to doctor their colds, or to find out what  activities they had been interested in during the day. Books are a favorite pastime. "      Rose asked," Do you read?"      "I have a study. I do my correspondence and keep a card file on the children's health. That was a most helpful system. I purchased a card file from the stationers near here and record all the important information about each of them. It helps so much to be able to check back on symptoms of illness, weight, diet and  all the important information, such as vaccinations, schick tests, confirmation dates, et cetera. I recommend this idea to you Mrs. Amoroso."  Rose Amoroso envied Rose Kennedy. She was a good mother who stayed at home to care for her children. My grandmother was widowed with three children, lived on welfare, and spent long hours washing clothes for others. She also cooked and sewed for strangers. Her brother's family lived nearby but they did not help out with baby sitting, buying groceries, or making  repairs around her apartment. She was overworked and underpaid. In recent months, her son had become disruptive in school. She found herself yelling at him and  even threatening to hit him with the frying pan. The long hours at work and the tension at home were wearing her out. The more she worked, the less time she had to educate her children. This added to her shame and guilt. She tried to imagine what it was like to be Mrs. Kennedy. She asked, "Do you get to know your children's books really well?"      Mrs. Kennedy smiled again, her beautiful teeth impressing Rose. "My youngest son  favorite book is King Arthur and His Knights. I am very careful to select books which are recommended at  school or by a children's book shop. Joe and Jack however, are indifferent  to these edifying selections. The book Jack treasures is Billy  Whiskers. It is  a story about a goat, which my mother bought in a department  store. The illustrations seemed to me to be crude and the colors harsh but the boys adore the stories and delight in the whole series, pictures and all."      My grandmother remembered something from her past. Years ago she had told John Dewey and his friends that their mothers had given them something special. The Kennedy children seemed to have received the same advantage. Their parents read to them, bought them books, and kept tract of every detail in their lives. They also had a father who sat with them with a book in his hand. No wonder they owned the universe. Carmelo was dead and that changed things for her children. "When my husband was alive, he sang to my children," she said.      Mrs. Kennedy reached over to touch the sleeve of my grandmother's blouse. They had been speaking for sometime, and it never occurred to her that her seamstress was a widow. With a timid smile, she said, "Please accept my condolences Mrs. Amoroso. Was it from the fever?"      "No. Mr. Amoroso worked at the Fore River Shipyard. Toward the end of the war, his lungs collapsed from the weight of the dust."     Hearing shipyard, Mrs. Kennedy said, "Mr. Kennedy was the assistant manager of the shipyard. He marveled at the workers who passed beneath his window."  Rose knew Mrs. Kennedy was too far away from her experience say anything else. As in Sicily, grand people did not perceive the nature of exploitation. Jack and Henry returned under Mr. Lipman's arms. He had caught them playing cards on the loading dock. Henry had a handful of pennies in his handkerchief; Jack was impressed. The mothers gave a collective sigh, and told them to go to confession that afternoon. The boys looked at each other and winked.      Outside, Henry asked his mother a question: "Ma, have you ever tried to lie?"      "What a rude question. I should slap your face."     "Then why did you tell the lady you were going to kill me when we got home?" Rose had a son to educate, so she cracked," We have one more stop to make." They boarded the trolley, and within minutes Henry was fast asleep. When he awoke, he looked out onto the grandest sight he had ever seen. He trembled a bit as he shook off his sleep. He was in Copley Square in front of the majestic Boston Public Library, the oldest free municipal library in the United States. Designed by European trained Americans, it was a dazzling monument, equal to any work produced in ancient Rome. The style was Renaissance Revival, and it was decorated with motifs and the names of famous philosophers, scientists, and poets. Within were enormous reading rooms, majestic ceilings, glowing limestone steps, oak bookcases, dazzling murals, and busts of eminent authors.      " Who do you think built this building?" There was something aggressive in the way she spoke.      "Uncle Bosco?" he answered, watching the ants  hurry along the sidewalk.      Rose reached over and touched his cheek. "I lived near great buildings when I was a girl. I passed them on my way to school. I knew the men who built them. In the evening, I danced with friends among the ruins. Your grandfather was a great mason who built homes from plans he sketched on  scraps of paper. My brothers learned from him. Now Sebastian shows the Americans how to build. Antonio does the same in Egypt. Uncles Erna and Garofalo are skilled plasterers who bring light to libraries like this one." A tear formed under her cheekbone as she continued. "You are small like your father so  you have no chance to be like them. You also play too much. Forget about this crazy baseball. Pay attention to your school work. I don't want you to beg for bread when you become a man. "      "I hate school Ma. Besides, I want to watch after you. I will never leave you."      She held his face in her hands. " Remember our trip to this place." She kissed him and then she drew him close to her. This was something she had not done in a long time.      Note 3: Mrs. Kennedy's words are taken from an interview recorded at the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site in 1969.

Chapter Six chronicles my working class education. My grandmother shared her memories with me before I went to school. Her unspoken message about perseverance contributed to my success. Yet, I graduated from high school without the ability to express my ideas clearly and I did not read a book for pleasure until I was ready to graduate. For me, literacy was an object on a test. Fortunately, schoolmates and others helped me find another reason to read. Not only did I gain a way to pass time, I also discovered that others do not own history.
 

Literacy as Transformation

 

Hans was different because he read books. Nevertheless, Dad liked him because Hans had not forgotten who he was. He became my friend, too, a role model with a great deal of concern about my education.  He stood in sharp contrast to the guy I had used as an earlier role model. This was Tim Steward, my floor proctor during my freshman year in college. Tim was a well-bred kid from New York City who had a famous dad. Tim wrote a column for the college newspaper, and edited our literary magazine. He was the only student to ace the advanced poetry class.  His first drafts were his final drafts. You could hear him typing late at night, and smell the smoke from his cigarette. He wore pin stripped, button down shirts and cuffed, charcoal gray slacks. He always wore a sports jacket without a tie. He read the New York Times, and talked about art form movies, contemporary fiction, and Broadway musicals. Coming from the Upper West Side, and he knew what it meant to dine in a four star restaurant. He had been to Europe twice, had interned at his father's newspaper, and spent summers at Flying Head Point.  He also had a liberal-chic side to him: uncombed hair, a distinct body odor, and penny loafers without socks. He reminded me of my Contemporary Fiction professor, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Both spoke in long sighs without direct eye contact. Tim was unfriendly and arrogant and unafraid to tell you he was brilliant. I took a deep breadth whenever I spoke to him. Although he was afraid to get his hands dirty, he was most willing to pick apart my grammar. He especially talked down to students like me who came to college with no books in our background.  Tim was very different from the rest of us. For the most part, we were working class kids who wore sweat pants to class, and ate at the Dairy Queen when we could afford it. We rarely read for enjoyment or put in long hours in the library. Our idea of current  events was the latest statistics on the team back home. We hunted in the fall, went to Sunday mass, marched every Tuesday at ROTC, and cut class whenever we could. We went to college to please our overworked parents.  Although I had nothing in common with Tim, I wanted to be just as witty, sophisticated, and urbane. I subscribed to a literary magazine called the "Saturday Review." I read the "New York Times Review of Books." I even joined the Book of the Month Club. I started to drink coffee, displayed my books, and even experimented with smoking. Who was I kidding? I did not derive pleasure from reading literary criticism, nor could I tolerate contemporary fiction. More important, Tim's lifestyle cost money. Best sellers were expensive as were the latest Charlie Parker records, movie tickets, trips to Montreal, dry cleaning, and five ounce hamburgers at Charlie's. I could not afford culture.  I needed a more down-to-earth role model. While I admired my father's distrust of authority, I found his closed- mindedness difficult to accept. Tim's sophistication was appealing, but as I said previously, his arrogance and narcissism offended me. Hans   combined education with a trade in an unassuming manner. He was passionate about ideas, and he was happy to share them with me. I knew I wanted to be like him.  This was not the first time I had found a role model in the workplace. Two summers earlier I had worked with an elderly Scottish mechanic in the shipyard. I dug out faulty welds from huge rings with a twenty pound hand-held hydraulic grinder. It was  dangerous and numbing work. The deafening noise and foul smells of the abrasives scorching black steel, filled the air. Mr. Cameron made sure I held my grinder away from my body. Otherwise, I would have sliced off my leg or something worse.  At lunchtime, I would leave exhausted to rest outside in the clear air. Mr. Cameron never joined me; instead, he went off by himself to read. One day as I passed him on my return to the work area, he asked me if I enjoyed poetry. His question caught me off guard. The only thing I thought about in this place was the 3:30 p.m. air horn blast to pack away my tools. "Um...of course...I like the Romantic Poets... John Keats...bought a new biography about him last fall."      "Do you know who Robert Burns is?" he asked.      "Yes. He's a Scottish poet, isn't he? There is a statue of him near my church."      "That's right. Do you know any of his poems?"      "I do remember one that starts, My Bonnie lives over the ocean."       "Oh, you mean "...He then recited it verbatim adding two poems . He said proudly, "I know them all by heart. I eat with Bobby Burns everyday. I carry his verses in my pocket. You see this book?"  He took out a small leather bound volume from his rear pocket. "I have had this book since I was a child. I take it every place I go. Bobby Burns takes me back to my childhood."  Both Hans and Mr. Cameron influenced my literacy development. They were skilled craftsmen who read philosophy, poetry, and history. Their literacies were not an expression of privilege, but a way to humanize experience.

Chapter Seven presents the literacy histories of my first two sons. Perry faced a literacy crisis the first day he stepped inside a school. Born and raised in the Caribbean he was immediately placed in the lowest reading group when we moved to the United States. No matter how much evidence existed to the contrary, his teachers considered him unskilled. For years he endured paternalistic and fragmented instruction. Unappreciated, he eventually dropped out. His story is a way of illustrating the obstacles children face when teachers do not behave rationally with respect to evaluating and categorizing their learning. My second son, Justin, taught himself to read and write before he went to school. When he entered the first grade he radiated thoughtfulness and great strength as a story teller. By the end of the fifth grade he could not complete his work on time. Unable to make sense out of an ethos that valued finishing work on time over expressiveness, he fell into a long period of self-doubt. His story, so full of promise, is used to examine educational practices that silence children.
 

The Gift of Literacy

Like Howard Zinn, author of a Peoples' History of the United States (1980), I believe history is written from an elitist perspective. The same can be said about literacy. Many models focus on a cognitive analysis of behavior. From this view point, reading is an empirical act in which means (skills) and ends (comprehension) are objectified and measured. In this environment, the role of the learner is to turn visual information into speech. To understand the limitations of this thinking, we have to look no further than literacy biographies and historical data. In addition, a common sense approach to educational problems reveals inherent flaws in the way we set policy. Did anyone predict 100 years ago there would be unintended consequences to measuring the mental abilities of school children? For that matter, did anyone warn poor and illiterate American families that intelligence testing might deny their children equal learning opportunities? A century later, are we smart enough or wise enough to know if the push for more phonics (means) and tougher standards (ends) will affect children's' learning? Few studies exist, yet horror stories abound. Without a cultural and historical perspective, evaluating educational policies and practices is impossible.

In classical Greek theater, heroes sometimes disregard the limits of their powers. The sin they commit is called hubris, and the brightest are usually the most guilty. In a strangely ironic way, the wisest character in the narratives is not an intellectual, but a simple, pious woman who responded to extraordinary circumstances with ethical and religious insight. My grandmother's literacy symbolizes what is needed in educational decision making: more attention to presumptive thought.

Keeping History Alive

Chapter Eight uses my grandmother's story to argue for a critical interpretation of literacy. Rose represents the tens of thousands of illiterate immigrants who made it in America because she had the capacity to think for herself. I explore the nature of her literacy and her competence to learn from experience. I discuss the value of using literacy histories to examine school practice. I advocate the use of literature and biography in teacher training programs and highlight writers who contributed to my intellectual development.
 

Unveiling the Past

Making Sense Out of School Failure

The material in Chapter Nine connects with my father's story. It responds to the question: What would have kept him in school? The chapter revisits the old debates about central nervous system disorders and hyperactive deficits that can only be overcome with systematic instruction and stimulants. An alternative response to failure is to center instruction on what the student already knows. This approach called dialogical teaching, is grounded in historical antecedents, and is supported by years of research including my own studies of prison inmates.
 

Unconscious Assumptions

Critical Literacy in the Classroom

Chapter 10 makes clear the social and political meaning of literacy. It focuses on the link between my story and that of the fictitious child Falia portrayed in Chapters Two and Three. We were obedient children who did what we were told. In school, we were neither moody nor irritable, merely passive. That is until friends showed us how literature could free us from deception and manipulation.

This chapter posits that real literacy, if taught properly, raises consciousness. If the goal of literacy is the analysis of experience, then dialogue serves as the starting point for instruction. The teacher produces simple poetic texts that elicit strong emotional responses. Students reciprocate by producing stories that matter to them. The roots of a story telling approach are found in folk traditions and are behind all progressive methodologies. Although simple and inexpensive to use, the technique has never gained wide spread acceptance in schools.
 

Mario Puzo Becomes a Writer

Why Blame Schools?

Perry's and Justin's stories are used to reflect on the cultural values and behaviors that undermine achievement. The conceptual framework comes from the work of Claude Steele and Henry Giroux, educational theorists who argue that schools are more than settings for academic learning. The hidden curriculum that stereotyped them is identified and critiqued. Answers are found in the research on teachers' judgments and expectations and in Freire's critical vision of schooling.

Looking Ahead to the 21st Century

The past 100 years has been a dramatic time in American education. Millions of poor and working class children were sent to public schools for the first time. For many, learning to read and write came with needless struggle. The nature of that struggle is documented in the personalized histories of my family. The pattern across our literacies was obstruction. My grandmother never received fair and just acknowledgment of her literacies. My father could read and write but never really understood why he failed in school. I turned my back on books until I graduated. Tragically my son's voice was nearly extinguished in school. The real power of literacy, a way to understand experience, was not given freely to us.

If we are to fulfill the Jeffersonian ideal of an informed citizenry, changes in the way we think about literacy and education have to be made. A powerful starting point is to document our own literacy histories. The moral imperative is clear; literacy histories not only broaden our understanding of cultural norms that shaped our values, they also