Reworking the soil: Early literacy intervention policies and the community participation of all learners

Commitment to individually authentic participation is an important element of successfully inclusive communities and societies. Not only characterized by diversity, such groups have organized themselves to draw upon that diversity for problemsolving and synergistic creativity. At the same time, and sometimes in conflict with that belief, most societies identify particular skills and abilities as singularly important to legitimate adult participation and, therefore, as generalizable. These cultural tools are likely to dominate the established curricula of schools: mathematics, language, literacy, science. One method for ensuring that all citizens have access to these participatory tools is to entrench them in public policy. Well-meant though they might be, for some children such policies negatively impact their authentic participation. A tension arises, then, between the overall intent of the policy and the immediate lived experience. Reworking a policy implies an examination of whether or not the lived experience of those affected by the policy is congruent with the policy's deepest intent. This work explores the impact of early literacy intervention policies on young children who struggle with reading and writing. Intertextual interpretation layers the writings of Charles Taylor and Jean Vanier with the experiences of growing up in a Mennonite community to illuminate conditions that support the development of authentic interpretive and representational modes.