Shirley Brice Heath

Brice Heath's ethnography of two commmunities in Piedmont South Carolina illuminates ways that culture influences language and literacy learning. Her conclusions show that schools cater to the success of "townspeople", students from middle class, educated backgrounds, while students from rural or blue collar communities fail and drop out at alarming rates. By training teachers to look at instructional strategies from an ethnographic standpoint, progress was made in student retention, engagement and performance. The ending is bittersweet because, as her study ends during the Reagan era there was a shift to federal mandates for student performance, which has reached absurd proportions today under "No Child Left Behind". A one-size-fits-all approach will never work in a country as diverse as the U.S.… (meer)