Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Why Johnny Can't Write
Because of teachers who actually think Ebonics is a language:
As a teacher in a predominantly African-American school where the majority of students exhibited some features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE, also called Ebonics or "Spoken Soul"), I needed to learn the rules and history of the language so I could help students move between the two language systems.
In my student Larry's narrative about shoes, for example, I needed to keep track of his patterns of punctuation errors, but I also had to help him understand when he used features of AAVE:
Them old Chuck Taylor high top nasty looking Converse these are the ugliest shoes I had ever seen. I thought as I put them on. "Mom why I have to wear these ugly shoes." My mom say they was in style. "Larry be quiet these are in style right now." "I don't see how they raggedy."
While Larry made some basic errors in punctuation, many of his "mistakes" correctly use the grammar structure of AAVE. This can be difficult for a teacher without a linguistic background to understand. As Geneva Smitherman noted in her groundbreaking book Talkin' and Testifyin', "Linguistically speaking, the greatest differences between contemporary Black and White English are on the level of grammatical structure." It looks like Larry's errors are simply grammatical, but if a teacher studied the grammar of AAVE, she would recognize that he follows many of the linguistic features of black vernacular.
For Larry, simply correcting these grammar errors without acknowledging their roots in his home language is not only inefficient, it sets Standard English up as the "correct language" and AAVE as wrong.
|posted by Jim on 6:23 PM|
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Is Bolivia Our Future?
NRO's John Derbyshire recommended "The Last Days of Bolivia?" today "for the light it sheds on current issues of race, nationality, globalization, and the drug war." He is spot-on.
Change a few details in the following excerpt and it could be a leaflet on an American college campus or even a party platform plank:
More important still, are the links to what might be called Inca nationalism, a movement to repeal four hundred years of Bolivian history. In the new dispensation, Indian languages are to be given official status; the curriculum of schools is to be altered to provide indigenous content (to the point that the medical schools are to include native healing arts); even the name of the country is to be changed to Kollasuyo. While the Indians can rightly claim that they have received far less than their fair share of the nationÂ?s wealth and services over many centuries, they are hardly likely to improve their lot by turning their backs on modernity altogether.
I have been contemplating a longer take on this issue. The short version is that it does the minority in any society little good to insist on learning its own version of facts to the exclusion of facts accepted by all. All children in American schools need to know something of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Reagan if only to be better citizens and more informed voters when they take their turn running the country.
The reading for a degree in Chicano Studies certainly is more "affirming" for a Mexican-American student than, say, the reading for a degree in chemical engineering. But which degree will have greater value on pay day?
A family with millions in the bank need not fret if Junior decides to specialize in playing the sitar, to mention an actual case in the New York Times Magazine. But a child without such family support would do well to compare his or her interests with the market's valuation of them.
When asked the value of bilingual education, one advocate opined that its graduates would make fine bilingualeducationn teachers in the future. Graduates of an English immersion program, by contrast, enjoy far broader career options.
Once people are shunted tosociety'ss sidelines by education choices meant to preserve their self-esteem, they become a looming powder keg of insurrection. That is Bolivia's situation today and may well be America's unless we get our act together.
|posted by Jim on 7:03 PM|
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Tuesday, June 01, 2004
The Fragmented Hispanic Vote
Just ask Myriam Márquez, author of "Juan-Come-Lately takes Hispanics for granted," Orlando Sentinel, May 16, 2004:
McClintock, who is pro-[Puerto Rican] statehood, thinks Kerry simply isn't getting good advice about the differences among Hispanic groups. Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos have common concerns no different than those of other Americans, including the need for better jobs, education and health care. But there are important distinctions and nuances even within each group that can make or break a candidate. ...
True, Kerry's Hispanic support in the polls is strong nationwide, even in Central Florida, but the number of swing voters here signals Kerry's support is mushy at best, and President George W. Bush hasn't missed an opportunity to break into that mushy middle. In fact, Bush's campaign has spent millions of dollars already in television and radio ads to court the Latino vote in key swing states, including Florida and New Mexico, while Kerry has spent little to nothing.
Even the chairman of the DNC's Hispanic Caucus has expressed concern about the Kerry campaign's Juan-come-lately approach. "The reality is that we're entering May and the Kerry campaign has no message out there to the Hispanic community, nor has there been any inkling of any reach-out effort in any state to the Hispanic electorate, at least with any perceivable sustainable strategy in mind," Alvaro Cifuentes wrote in an e-mail to Dems that was leaked to the New York Times recently. "It is no secret that the word of mouth in the Beltway and beyond is not that he does not get it; it is that he does not care."
|posted by Jim on 1:05 PM|
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