So what's the Latino equivalent to Ebonics? Does the school system teach them in a special language? This is a failure of the school system to properly teach, end of story. All this does is perpetuate the use of bad English.
It's called "Spanish." I would imagine that a lot of those Latino students speaking English as a second language, if at all.
It's one thing to teach English to non-native speakers, but we're talking about people born and raised in the US who should be speaking proper English. It's a complete capitulation by the school system in order to satisfy the short-term goal of raising test scores.
See, now this isn't a bad idea. And if you teach teachers the STRUCTURE of black dialects, it makes teaching, esp. English, much easier. Of course, this isn't new. The scholar Mina Shaughnessy figured this out in her book Errors and Expectations pretty much a generation ago, based on her long experience teaching at CCNY. And I learned the same thing when I taught at LSU: students from Cajun backgrounds made grammar and mechanical errors that baffled me at first, until I realized they were writing standard English with Cajun French syntactical patterns. Once I figured out the nature of the error, it was a lot easier to teach them the right way to write standard English. Same goes for people speaking just about any dialect, regardless of their racial or ethnic background. But if you're actually going to teach Ebonics, or teach IN Ebonics... not a great idea.
The standard (ever-changing, btw) is the standard b/c someone says it's the standard; there's nothing inherently good or right or correct about it. It allows access to certain ways of being in the world. Without knowledge of it, you are denied those ways of being in the world. You want access, for whatever reason? You need the standard. If teaching black english gets kids to compae and contrast and critically engage toward making informed choices about that standard toward those ends, it makes sense. Otherwise, I'd have to be convinced.
I think Mike nailed the answer here. Parents who accept ANY race or culture or ethnic driven lesson plan that teachers peddle are at fault; that is why the PTA is such a powerful tool... Putting parents voice in parity with teachers is critical to a balanced education... numerous culture driven lesson plans (ebonics et al.) have been proposed, and defeated, in our school district. My own experience is that these cultural-driven ethnic exercises in diversity loose steam once their advocates need to verbally justify them. A PTA forum becomes very hostile to such diversity agenda when justification seems illusive.
I'd be curious to see what this program/curriculum looks like. This issue is a little more complicated than people might realize. I'm fairly certain, if I may generalize a bit, that most low-income black families understand that there is a language of power, and they want their children to be fluent in that language and to have access to power. But that desire doesn't necessarily translate into the ability or inclination to teach children the language. Families count on schools to do that. So it's not particularly constructive to say that parents should teach their children one thing or another. For whatever reason, they're not doing it. There are certain realities that schools, families and communities have to accept. Black English is a dialect of American English. It's not a series of mistakes or slang; it's a way of speaking that whole communities use constantly in their day-to-day communication. For many students, it's the only way they know how to speak when they enter school. Those students are going to be at a tremendous disadvantage if teachers tell them "You don't talk right. Stop that and start talking my way now." Imagine taking 15 Portugese-speaking 5-year-olds and putting them in a classroom with an English-speaking teacher, and having her say the same thing. Okay, it's not a perfect analogy, as Black English is a dialect and not really a whole separate language. The point, however, is that students who come into the classroom having less experience with standard English cannot be expected to have the same grasp of the language as children who grew up speaking and hearing it. We are cheating students if we don't teach them the rules of standard English. The question here is not whether we should or shouldn't do that. It's how best to accomplish that. Just to illustrate the complexity of this issue, I'll share a little anecdote. I know I've already shared the one about the time I had to argue with my brightest student because he simply wouldn't accept that the third-person plural past-tense conjugation of "to be" is "they were" and not "they was." So here's a different one. Near the end of the school year I decided to get frank with my class and have an open discussion of these issues. I wanted them to acknowledge that there are two ways of speaking, and one is mainstream or "white" and the other "black" or "ghetto" or whatever labels they wanted to use. So I wrote some phrases on the board in Black English. I wrote down things the students were saying to each other at that moment. "You is not Melissa mama," for example. The students scoffed, saying I was writing it wrong, and insisting that they never talk like that - even though I had only written exactly what one girl had just uttered. One student even said, "That don't sound right." So I wrote "That don't sound right." And he told me it was wrong! The point is that the students absolutely knew the rules of standard English, and thought it was very strange to see ghetto English written down. But they didn't have any vocabulary to discuss the differences. To them, the way they spoke was gangsta, and the way I spoke was white. The way they spoke was wrong for school, they knew that. Yet they still consistently made the same mistakes in their writing, because they were so accustomed to speaking and hearing a certain language. So it's not as simple as them not knowing "correct" grammar or refusing to use it. An open dialogue in which students and teachers can just be honest about different ways of speaking would be nice. But the racial issues make it a little too touchy for many people to approach.
I ran ITN's message thru an ebonics translator: "Yo buss dis. I think Mike nailed de answuh here. mommas who accept ANY race or cultua or ethnic drivun lesson plan dat teachers peddle be at fault; dat be why de PTA be such a powerful tool... Puttin mommas voice in parity wit teachers be critical to a balanced education... numerous cultua drivun lesson plans (ebonics et al.) be proposed, an' defeated, in our school diskrict. My own experience be dat dese cultural-drivun ethnic exercises in diversity loose steam once deir advocates need to verbally justifydem. A PTA forum becomes very hostile to such diversity agenda when justification seems illusive. Sheeit! "
What a cool post this is. Thanks for giving an example of how complex the problem is. The famous linguist William Labov had a similar example, when he was talking about class and accents. He'd spent some time interviewing a mother and daughter in New York about accents: which were in their opinion good, bad, high, low, etc. He recorded them singing the old song "Strawberry shortcake, cream on top. I've got a date with my sweetheart" in which they dropped the "r" from "heart" and included some other indicators that they'd just identified as "bad," never realizing that these were part of their own speech. Labov was crushed that he'd ruined the experience for them, because they were clearly embarrassed while listening to themselves whereas before they were exhilarated by being treated as expert informants. But it's a good example of how people can be aware of how the system works as a whole but unaware of which part of it they're operating in.
A lot of good stuff in here. I especially noted the fact that the kids KNEW the correct form but chose not to use it. Now we have some numbskull pop-psychologists telling black kids they are too stupid to learn in a conventional setting and so we have to dumb it down for them. Ridiculous. This person should be forced to watch Coach Carter until she finally realizes SHE is pertuating racism by telling kids they are, in effect, losers, and incapable of talking in any other fashion than this abomination. And I would go one step farther for the Hispanic kids; by insisting they stay in Spanish-language classes forever, if they choose, instead of requiring them to graduate to English after a year, we are telling them the same thing..."you are too stupid to learn in English so we won't require you try." No wonder the educational system is failing when people like this have anything to do with it. *end of rant*
Man, way to be a good "Joe Everyman" buzz kill. Ebonics is such a silly sounding name, and it lets us work up a good froth on "Politically Correct (tm)", "What's wrong with America (tm)", and lazy parents who don't want to teach their children. Furthermore, we can discount an entire way of speaking by Black people (who get way too much protection from being made fun of, at least in public) without anyone so much as batting an eye. Viva Ebonics I say. A legion of late-night talk show hosts and talk radio commentators depend upon such things for their livelyhood. And they have children! Think of the children!