Response to Farr

In Farr’s article she discusses how she studied Mexican families from Chicago and two ranchos in Mexico. She watched how the families had close relationships with friends, calling them “compadrazgo”; which is just another way to say godparent. She explains how some of the families have members that move back and forth from Chicago to Mexico, some only visit for weeks at a time and others only have the husband in Chicago sending money to his family back at home. Not every member in these families went all the way through school; some had to stay at home to help the family. But Farr states that some of them were at a higher level at literacy than expected due to their own motivations. A group of men were able to “pick up” literacy from other people using spoken language. What motivated these men to want to be able to read and write was that they wanted to be able to write to their families back home. What the article then continues to prove is that it is quite possible to learn literacy without actually going to school. One man was able to teach himself after only going to school for a total of three months. He would just practice on the things he saw. She also mentions that it is possible to learn to write before learning to read; there is no right order.
As Farr explained, what helps a person learn literacy by spoken language is motivation, and it’s not something everyone has. This just proves the old saying that “you can do anything you put your mind to” can work for reading and writing as well. It doesn’t have to be taught in a school setting; however a person has to want it. I find it interesting that a lot of this can be related to earlier readings such as Douglass and what we know from our history. Common people couldn’t send their children to school because they needed them at home to help work or there wasn’t a school close enough to them; just as it was for these groups of people. But just like Douglass, some of them found a way to learn it other ways and succeeded.