ABSTRACT
It has only been in the past several years that scholars have begun to connect the issues of language, literacy, and culture in any substantive way. Prior to this time, they were considered to exist largely separate from one another. As a result, educators usually thought about culture, for example, as distinct from language and from reading and writing except in the most superficial of ways; or as English as a Second Language (ESL) divorced from the influence of native culture on learning; or as the contentious debate about phonics and whole language as somehow separate from students’ identities. These dichotomies have largely disappeared in the past 20 years. It is now evident that language, literacy, and culture are linked in numerous ways and that all teachers-whether they teach preschool art or high school mathneed to become knowledgeable in how they affect students’ schooling.
