Framing the Literacy Issue: Correcting Educational Misrepresentations in U. S. Society.

A good part of the recent public debate in US educational policy circles has focused on the myriad challenges we face as a nation on literacy achievement particularly in urban communities and among African Americans. In this paper, we examine the problem of framing in literacy that confronts advocates and policy makers who seek to address this deeply entrenched social issue but are challenged by numerous structural constraints on the part of the government, the community and the individual. The paper presents arguments embedded in critical race theories that raise questions surrounding why and how long the illiteracy issue can be framed as an 'African American dilemma or problem' and whether Eurocentric approaches in the classroom should be replaced by Afrocentric ones to improve scholastic achievement among African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]