Comments on Homework #10
Comments on Homework #10Class Average ___; Range 6 to 10.
This assignment was rather different than most of the preceding assignments, as it was far more open-ended. We were pleased to see that it generated a wide range of differing opinions on the role of non-standard dialects of English in education: these opinions were often quite interesting, well-informed, and cogently argued. Here are some thoughts on issues that were raised.
On the other hand, we were disappointed to see that a number of people seem to have misunderstood the issue that was being debated, despite explicit guidelines in the instructions for the homework. None of the opinions under considerations are denying that mastery of 'standard' or literary English is a primary goal of education. What was under discussion was how best to achieve this goal in the case of children whose primary spoken language differs from this standard in many respects, and whether understanding of these differences could aid in mastery of the standard.
[Scores: essays which were moderately clear and informed (e.g. from using the sources provided, or other materials) were given the default score of 8; higher (and lower) scores were given for essays which were very lucid (or unclear) and well-informed (or not). Although many of the comments written on individual essays reflect our own personal opinions, scores on essays do not reflect their conformity with our views: there were essays which we strongly disagreed with which received high scores, and essays which we agreed with, but which lacked a cogent argument for that opinion.]
Some thoughts on what we read...
In the wake of the Oakland School Board resolution about Ebonics a widespread misconception arose that the Oakland School Board was (a) advocating Black English as the exclusive language of its students, (b) proposing course in how to read and write Black English. This misconception was probably due in part to poor wording of the OSB's original resolution, in part to the inability of sound-bite oriented public figures to comprehend the proposal, and in part to malicious twisting of the proposal in order to bring it into ill-favor. What the Oakland School Board *did* propose was that special measures be taken to improve the literacy training of the disctrict's many speakers of Black English. They reasoned that if teachers understood better how the student's native language differed from the variety of written English that they were trying to learn, then teachers might be better equipped to help students with their difficulties. [Note that this is *hardly* a radical suggestion!]
It is useful to think about similarities and differences between teaching 'standard' English to speakers of a dialect, and teaching foreign languages. If it is your job to teach English to a class of native speakers of Spanish or Japanese students, it is certain that there are some aspects of English which these students will have a lot of difficulty with. Do you think that you might be able to better help these students if you understand something about how their native language works, so that you can help to clarify the differences between English and the native language?
There's a difference between actively "teaching" a non-prestige dialect and making students aware of the characteristic properties of dialects and how they are as systematic as other varieties of language. Many people pointed out that they would advocate education about dialect diversity, even if they would not support training in "how to use" non-prestige dialects.
There is probably no need to teach children "how to use" their spoken dialect, in any case, because they learn this very well out of school. Nevertheless, understanding its systematicity could be useful.
One thing that I found useful in considering the various arguments raised was to see how they applied to my own dialect of British English, which in the United Sates is just as diferent from the prestige 'standard' variety of American English as most other non-prestige dialects of American English are. The one important difference is that -- for reasons of historical accident and strange social preconceptions -- my dialect is not stigmatized in the way that most other non-conforming dialects of English are stigmatized in this country. Isn't it strange that my dialect of English is more than tolerated here, while other varieties of English are the object of so many prejudices!
(More or less) the same is true for New Yorkers. There are extremely clear features of the dialect of speakers from New York City, and yet speakers of this dialect are under very little pressure to suppress this dialect. On the other hand, speakers of dialects from the Southern US are well aware of the fact that speakers from other areas often bear prejudices against their dialect, and therefore are expected to hide or 'dilute' the features of their dialect.
The linguistic situation in Switzerland serves as an extremely useful point of comparison for the problems for the United States addressed by this assignment.
This linguistic situation has a lot in common with the American situation, except that (i) it doesn't create any problems for the Swiss, and (ii) it doesn't coincide with strong preexisting racial prejudices which are independent of language.
Socio-economic: a common argument was that only people who exclusively use the prestige variety of English will achieve economic success and attain broad social acceptance. The economic argument would be well-taken, if anybody had been suggesting that speakers of low-prestige urban dialects be encouraged to *exclusively* use their low-prestige dialect. But I know of nobody who is currently advocating that. The suggestion was that people should be able to command multiple varieties of spech and writing, so that they can be used in situationally appropriate contexts. The argument about social acceptance strikes me as circular: the argument seems to be that society should not accept non-prestige dialects because society does not accept non-prestige dialects.
Linguistic: some people felt that non-prestige dialects should be excluded because they are "lazy", "sloppy", or "chopped"; they were often described as "ungrammatical". These linguistic arguments, unlike the others raised, are entirely unjustified. Saying that sentences possible in one variety of English are "ungrammatical" because they are not possible in some *other* variety of English is like saying that a sentence of Spanish is ungrammatical because it is not a possible sentence of English. Nobody has difficulty seeing that this is an absurd argument. Similarly, most people would be happy to say that entirely well-formed sentences of Northern British English such as "I might have done" or "He gave it me" are not ungrammatical, they're just from a different variety of English. Therefore, it's rather surprising that similar differences among varieties of English spoken in the United States are not accepted as just differences.
This says nothing about whether or not the dialect forms in question lack prestige or not. The point is just that there is no linguistic evidence that non-standard forms of English are inferior.
Disagreement is healthy, but I should point out that on this point I am aware of no linguistic evidence whatsoever that colloquial speech is inferior or degraded in this fashion. Linguists are generally a pretty fractious group, who rarely agree on anything, but this is one of the few areas where agreement is essentially unanimous.
Educational resources: a number of people argued that it might be nice to incorporate dialect-related education into school curricula, but that this is unfeasible given the already overburdened state of curricula and school budgets.
Now this is an issue of both priorities and educational efficiency: it is not so distant from the questions that the University of Delaware is currently dealing with involving the integration of technology-training and additional writing training into the university curriculum. How important is it that prejudices about language be overcome? How important is it that children in poor urban communities attain mastery of prestige English? If your conclusion is that there is not the money to implement programs for improvement, then should we conclude that you are resigned to a continuation of the current situation, in which a significant segment of the population is failing in education?
Practicality of multiplicity: another issue raised is that given the *many* different non-prestige varieties of English, it seems impractical to train students or teachers in all of these varieties ... therefore it it better to do nothing. The first half of the argument is well-taken, but the conclusion is not inevitable from this argument. Different steps could be taken according to the composition of each class.