Open Forum

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine reasons for literacy success or failure within school age children by looking deeper into family and community literacy and how the interplay between the two creates challenges in a formal learning environment. Literacy is a lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning using critical interpretations of the written or printed word. The theoretical approach adopted in this research paper is structured to prove that a child’s success in literacy is enhanced when cultural background is taken into account. I prove this by examining styles of learning in multiple speech communities. Analysis will reveal that children of low-income or multi-ethnic backgrounds will struggle academically, not due to lower I.Q. or lack of motivation but only because their at-home acculturation is very different than that learned in the classroom (Philips 2001). This can create a chasm of disparity between the child’s home learning environment and the child’s school learning environment.