What is happening in that school is what gee talks about in theory-

They don’t have the same “middle-class-like” school and so they can’t get that apprenticeship in the discourse and can’t learn it later- this is a “gate”

The quote is twofold- 1. The school is unequipped for ‘middle class like’ learning because of how cold and crappy it is 2. They are excluded from a ‘good’ – such as a middle class like school- because their parents and community don’t have the “extensive list of trivialities.

When combined Gee and Fortin’s articles seem to explain each other. Fortin’s article helps me to read with Gee, giving a real-world example to his theories. Gee explains that “such ‘superficialities’ cannot be taught in a regular classroom in any case; they can’t be ‘picked up” later, outside the full context of an early apprenticeship… in ‘middle-class-like’ school-based ways of doing and being. That is precisely why they work so well as ‘gates'” (Gee 12). Later he explains that these gates work because “without having mastered an extensive list of trivialities many people can be (and often are) excluded from ‘goods’ controlled by dominant groups” (Gee 12).

 In Fortin’s article, she explains a recent court case involving Detroit students and their dilapidated schools. After explaining how the case is a civil right issue Fortin quotes an attorney saying, “Historically, access to literacy has been a tool to subordinate certain groups and certain communities and to keep those communities down,” (Fortin 2).