Zinsser's "For the Bible Tells Me So: Teaching Children in a Fundamentalist Church," Michaels' "Narrative Presentations: An Oral Preparation for Literacy with First Graders," and Fishman's "Literacy and Cultural Context: A Lesson from the Amish," are three ethnographic studies of literacy relevant to the literacy hypothesis. The literacy hypothesis, that writing is a technology which transforms human consciousness and brings into existence new forms of thought that could not have existed in the absence of writing, can be challenged by an examination of three communities in which literacy is bound to the contexts of Fundamentalism, Black orality, and Amish tradition.
Zinsser's article focuses on one less-often studied context for literacy--the Sunday school. Zinsser's investigation is an ethnographic one, that is to say, a case study in the subjects' natural setting. With such an approach, Zinsser is able to observe the actual roles reading and writing play in the real, particular contexts in which they are used. Zinsser (1986) cites Heath's observation that in fundamentalist religious settings, there is a "striking similarit[y] of the teaching methods used in church and home" (p. 1). The similarity between church (Sunday School) and home literacy instruction makes a study of the acquisition of reading and writing more manageable, by consolidating what might have been two variables--school and home instruction.
Zinsser's subjects (four- and five-year-olds) were given the Bible as their source of the written word. They were taught that it is the literal word of God. The children were given lessons aimed at fostering their dependency upon the literal meaning of words, in a context devoid of alternative interpretations. Because a literal interpretation of the written word was accepted as the norm, literacy instruction for these children must be seen as specific to the community of fundamentalist Christians who consider th...