Both children and adults who do not have the culture of power need to be provided with the knowledge so they have a fair opportunity to acquire it. Then, they must have non-threatening contexts in which to practise. Delpit (1995) says one cannot force a new form onto someone. They can only be given the information and then when the situation arises, it becomes up to them to decide what choice they make.

Summary

It is well-recognized that children experience different educational realities prior to school entry for a number of reasons. They go through a process of enculturation into literacy practices as has been previously outlined and is summarized in Table 12 on the following page.

Heath (1983) outlines the contrasting ways that black and white children in her study engage with print. For example, the black children use print for real life purposes, to learn things, while the others use print more in the ways that schools demand. Thus, in Heath's research, the latter group was better prepared to enter the school setting and complete the required decontextualized reading tasks. In contrast, the black students in her study, found the reading tasks to lack a purpose without a real-life context and they were not successful in learning to read without context.