The Drinking God Factor

Abstract

This article offers a theoretical account of school literacy development that foregrounds the symbolic and social resources of childhood cultures. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected in an urban school site, this article illustrates how the playful childhood practices of a small group of young school children shaped their entry into school literacy. A child-named “drinking god” is used to capture the energizing force of the group’s developmental “remix” processes, through which they stretched, reorganized, and rearticulated their everyday cultural resources in their travels into school literacy. That god messes up any unitary pathway, renders visible the multiple communicative experiences that potentially intersect with literacy learning, and bequeaths to each child, in the company of others, the right to enter school literacy grounded in the familiar practices of their own childhood.