Práticas de letramento na trajetória de jovens adultos de camadas populares

Abstract

In the 80s of the last century, the academic field discussed the issue on schooling failure. Then new concepts appeared in order to break old paradigms. Among those paradigms there was the belief that the child, the family and the social means were responsible for the schooling failure, specifically in the reading and writing processes of learning. At this educational set, an ethnographic research inquired the importance of writing through the life of the children living with their low income families, just before and after their arrival at school (Castanheira, 1991). This research identified significant practices of reading and writing formed within the family means that were disregarded when children arrived at school. After twenty years, I present this study reporting those childrens future, who are young adults nowadays. The main is to understand how these young adults relate to writing by contrasting two moments in their lives: the childhood and the beginning of adult life. I searched for their experiences of life to know which meaning they assign to their practices of literacy, by identifying them both at school and everywhere so as to perceive how they have employed the writing action throughout childhood and adult life. The theoretical and methodological concepts are from an ethnographic approach and pass through discussions on Language and Sociology. I have noticed that those young people use the reading and the writing in several social places, such as: family, work, church, school. Furthermore, these spaces have influenced their literacy practices in a more operative than pleasurable way. Everyone thinks of being readers and they also consider reading and writing as fundamental elements to interact among others.