Week 8 notes 16/05/2011 23:25:00

← How are children communicatively immature and how do they learn?

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← Heath- Ways with Words
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← Chapter 1: The Piedmont: Textile mills and times of change
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← Piedmont – term used by outsiders and newcomers; not local residents
• “foot of mt” east of Appalachian mts from southwestern hills of VA
through North and South Carolina into GA and AL
• textile mills
• before 1800, predominantly non-slaveholding region
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← In 20th century, distinctions and divisions grew btwn (22):
• Mill-owners, local businessmen and professionals (“townspeople”)
o Saw themselves as having strong attachment to maintenance
of what they believed should be regionally accepted moral
and religious value
o Mill-owners proposed social reforms to improve mill ppl’s
“mental and moral culture”
o Townsppl’s desire to transmit their own culture onto
millworkers
• Vs. wage-earning millworkers (outside of town)
o Stereotyped by townsppl as “white trash” , country,
uninterested in schoolings, inclined toward early marriage,
disrespectful of cleanliness and godliness
• Distinct differences in language btwn the two (24)
• 1940-50s: total way of mill life was broken
• both blacks and whites caught btwn home (familiy) and school.
•
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← Communities: Roadville and Trackton, in central area of Piedmont
Carolinas
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← Roadville (28)
• White working-class families who have been part of mill life for 4
generations; 10,000
• From Appalachian Mt to Piedmont, uprooted by Great Depression
• Older generation – shared sense of gratitude for and belonging to
the mills
• Younger generation – care little abt mill in their future planning;
want to be up and out of mills
• Schooling – most folks have little education but believe it will do
something toward helping individual “get on”
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← Trackton (29)
• Working-class black community
• Older generation – brought up on land, either farming own land or
working others land
• Schooling – very little but also believe that it made a difference for
others, and therefore will make a difference for them
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← ** “The promise of good living and getting ahead, gaining a new life
and expanding the world of their past, helps guide the ways members of
both communities organize their daily lives, and especially the ways they
condition their children to see school in their future.” (29)
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← Ch. 2: “Getting’ on” in two communities (30)
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← In Roadville
• Mrs.Dee grew up on a farm surrounded by grandparents, aunts and
uncles. Waves of hard living during her upbringing in the mountains
prepared her to ‘work all my life’ (32)
• Two ways of looking at life
o ‘oldtimers’- remember the hard times, believe children in
those days learned ‘a lot of lessons school can’t teach’
o ‘youngfolks’ –think of the mill as a permanent part of their
own life, and they leave it entirely out of consideration for
their children’s future. Assumption that education will carry
their children away from the mill and Roadville (36)
 • roadville folks have very definite notions of how to get ahead: there
are things for the women to do and things for the men to do. (40).
• Roadville residents value hardwork , one of the lessons they learned
from their parents, and they want their children to grow up
“knowing what hard work means”—not enough work around to
ensure young acquire habit of hard work. Families create household
jobs for the young.
• Roadville parents want for their children the best of the old ways
and the best of the new (41).
• Schooling
o “enjoy it while you can, teach ‘em all you can now. When they
get on up in school, you can’t teach ‘em anything”—roadville
parents of junior and senior level students therefore both
depend on and resent the school- the bringing together of
differences in student backgrounds, extracurricular activities,
and expectations of behavior have undermined their close
community’s control and left them less able to relate to the
school of today.
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