My own literacy has always something I have taken for granted. I grew up in a small middle class town, with middle class parents who instilled middle class ideals in my brother and I from a young age. I believe that my emphasis on my ‘middle class’ upbringing is important in my analysis of my own literacy development as it explains in some part my exposure to literacy from a young age and my initial steps onto the mountain through becoming a text participant. Economists Levitt and Dubner, in one of my favourite books ‘Freakonomics’ (2005) analyse a U.S Department of Education study looking at the academic progress of more than twenty thousand children from kindergarten to the fifth grade. The actual results of this study are unimportant to my own literacy but the analysis of the factors contributing to these result are vital. Levitt and Dubner found that when looking at correlating factors leading to successful test scores in the students tested were having parents with a high socioeconomic status and, more interestingly, that the child has many books in his/her home. What was concluded was that the mere presence of the books in one’s home does not equal high literacy, more that the books themselves represent the inclination of the parents to value education and literacy as well as the socio-economic status of the parents. The point of this inclusion in my blog is to demonstrate my own cultural literacy by applying this text to my own life and therefore drawing meaning from it – in this way I hope I have explained and demonstrated cultural literacy through text participation.
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