ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what has been called an 'embodied' view of the mind and of learning. Sometimes this viewpoint is called a 'situated' view. The chapter discusses integral connections among mind, society, language, and literacy. Emergent literacy, which takes place for thousands of hours of a child's preschool years in some homes, prepares the child for learning to decode and understand texts in basic ways by first grade. Literacy is already well in motion before children have ever set foot in a school and on the basis of oral language. Annette Lareau, in her book Unequal Childhoods, identifies two different models of what it means to raise children in the United States. One model she calls the 'cultivation model'. This model is applied mostly, though not exclusively, by middle- and upper-middle-class parents. The other model she calls the 'natural growth model'. This model is applied mostly, though not exclusively, by parents in the working class or poor parents.
