Enlaces prometedores: Funds of Knowledge and Funds of Identity

In historically dehumanizing educational systems, oppressive structural policies include students segregated in academic tracks, separated by home and school language, taught Eurocentric worldviews and conventions, and exposed to a banking model of education with deposits of teacher knowledge held accountable to normalized and standardized criteria valued by dominant groups. These systems of oppression have existed in tandem with colonial expansion, settler colonialism of indigenous communities, gender binaries, and transatlantic slavery. In such systems of oppression, learners are led to accept racial and linguistic hierarchies and deficit views of specific languages and language speakers that may include their own. The Funds of Knowledge approach defies deficit views of subjugated languages, communities, families, and students. It does not accept segregated tracks, homeschool separations, and the privileging of dominant standard norms for language and literacy education. Instead, the Funds of Knowledge approach advocates for understanding the languages and literacies of lesser-known communities such as working-class migrant communities to integrate and build from these out of school funds in the curricula of educational settings. Human relationships, curricula, policies, and practices at school have the potential of building up the Funds of Knowledge at home. As such promising links or enlaces prometedores are being made with Funds of Knowledge and Funds of Identity approaches.