Deconstructing the Discourse of Strengths in Family Literacy

Abstract

The family movement in the United States has come of age: since the publication of Denny Taylor's seminal book in 1983 (Taylor, 1983), countless scholarly articles, research studies, and media reports on family have appeared. In the past 12 months alone, three major edited volumes have been devoted exclusively to this topic (Holt, 1994; Weinstein-Shr & Quintero, 1995; Morrow, 1995). The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) estimates that there are now over 1,000 family programs across the United States and argues that it is the best longterm solution to America's poverty problem, better even than school reform for tackling undereducation and all the related social and economic problems (Darling, 1992, p. 1). According to representatives of the U.S. Department of Education, Even Start, the largest family initiative in the United States is not only an important part of the U.S. education agenda for the 1990s but perhaps the key to reaching U.S. educational goals (McKee & Rhett, 1995, p. 166). Other English-speaking countries, influenced by the U.S. movement, have begun family initiatives of their own (RaPAL Bulletin, 1994; Harrison, 1995, Fine Print, 1994; Morrow &Paratore, 1993). Not only has family come to be seen as a state of the art approach to educational reform, but, according to Street (1995), it can be said to have gained the status of a literacy campaign. As such, I think we have come to a point where we need to do some stock-taking—to look at where we have been and where we want to go. Shortly after the appearance of Taylor's book, the first family programs were established, many of which focused on transmitting school practices into the home. At that time, I raised concerns about the dangers of a deficit perspective on family (Auerbach, 1989). In the past 5 years, I think a second generation of family programs has emerged, one in which virtually all of the proponents of family claim to oppose deficit perspectives and to embrace