Nothing's Funny About Ebonics

Mention the word Ebonics, and you get a visceral reaction. Cringes. Condemnation. Derisive laughter. From NAACP President Kweisi Mfume to poet Maya Angelou to columnist Carl T. Rowan, the word has gone out: Forget about that Ebonics jive.

Again, I say: Not so fast.

Studies by researchers at Stanford University show that black children who have been taught using the Ebonics program -- which recognizes so-called black English as distinct from standard English -- have improved their ability to read and write standard English. What's so funny about that?

For decades now, droves of urban youths have been dropping out of school. They are being hauled off by the busload to prisons, where it's discovered that many of them are illiterate. In the city of Washington alone, the equivalent of a high school graduating class dies in the streets every year.

If reading deficiencies are known to increase the likelihood of a person getting into serious trouble, and we have discovered that using the Ebonics method improves reading, writing and speaking among our most at-risk children, then why not support this teaching method?

Traditional approaches obviously have not worked for everybody. Moreover, after reviewing transcripts of some television and radio broadcasts about Ebonics, I have noticed that some of those who condemn Ebonics and advocate the "old-fashioned way" of teaching English don't speak such great English themselves.

Could it be that we are less concerned about children and more fearful of facing up to the fact almost none of us have taken the time to master this most complex language called English?

"I think we need more funds for education," Mfume said on ABC's "Nightline" last week, "for teachers, for resources, for books, for things that help the classroom, not necessarily to teach Ebonics."

A few days later, the D.C. financial control board cut the public schools budget by $4.5 million and virtually ruined the University of the District of Columbia with a $16.2 million budget cut.

Wish on, Mfume.

Some criticism of Ebonics stems from a mistaken belief that black children will be taught to speak "bad English." In fact, studies show that once students understand the structural differences between Ebonics and standard English, they begin to demonstrate a greater proficiency in standard English and to minimize their use of Ebonics.

"We want students to be at the highest level of reading and writing," said Mary R. Hoover, who has a doctorate in language education from Stanford and who is a consultant to the school system in Oakland, Calif. The school board there has called for training teachers in Ebonics, recognizing it as distinct from standard English and helping students who use Ebonics to master standard English. "In some cases," Hoover said, "students taught with Ebonics have moved up two grade levels in one year."

The contempt for Ebonics before any investigation has been remarkable. Even "The Bell Curve," a book based on research not nearly as sound as the work on which Ebonics is based, was taken more seriously. "The Bell Curve" said black people were genetically inferior, and it got serious discussion. Ebonics offers a method for bringing heretofore forgotten black children into the mainstream of American life, and it gets laughed at.

I guess we believe what we want to believe.

In Oakland, black parents and their elected representatives on the school board came to believe that it was unacceptable to have black students make up 71 percent of those in special education classes. In a school system where a little more than half of the students are black, officials would no longer tolerate having black students accounting for 80 percent of all suspensions, 67 percent of all truancies and 64 percent of all students held back a grade.

The school board brought in a team of scholars, educators, psychologists, parents and students, who discovered that one of the most serious barriers to learning was an environment of institutionalized degradation of black students -- especially concerning the way they used English.

Recall the words of one of our most notable African American historians, Carter G. Woodson, written in 1933: "In the study of language in school, pupils were made to scoff at the Negro dialect as some peculiar possession of the Negro which they should despise rather than directed to study the background of this language as a broken- down African tongue -- in short, to understand their own linguistic history."

Enter Ebonics, the name given to a language predicated on a West African linguistic structure with a phonology, morphology and syntax that exist as a systematic and predictable pattern of African American speech.

In Oakland, Ebonics is an integral part of a new philosophy of education, called for by parents themselves, which recognizes that any teaching technique that demeans, degrades, denigrates or destroys the self-esteem of black children is of no benefit to them.

For years now, Oakland and the District of Columbia have been locked in a battle for last place in the nation when it comes to how well students are educated. The two cities now have embarked on different courses to remedy the problems.

Oakland has made a decision to use Ebonics; the District has employed a retired general, who once ran a federal disaster relief agency, to rescue its schools. Surely, there is something to be said for and against each approach. But as Oakland school board member Toni Cook put it: "The proof is in the pudding."

Will the students end up more proficient in English? In Oakland, there is evidence that some already have. That's a reason to cheer, not laugh.