Urban literacy learning

This chapter describes literacy learning within urban contexts with respect to the scholarly literature, and illustrates where this framing of literacy needs expanding, especially as it pertains to vulnerable youth. Literacy scholars have long critiqued the mismatch between literacy as people as a field are coming to understand it and literacy as it gets enacted in the public sphere, particularly in public policy. Even as a social process, urban literacy learning must be thought of as more than interaction between individuals and individual participation within groups. Racism is never about race alone because race does not exist in isolation. In cities, the way one “learns” literacy and negotiates social space is shaped by and intermittently shapes her or his race, gender, and geographic context at once. In education, Black males are at the bottom or near the bottom of all academic achievement categories and are grossly overrepresented among school suspensions, dropouts, and special education tracks.