California School Requiring Ebonics

[James Boston]

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“Oh that’s different – they’re making a cultural statement”


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While I agree that is a load of crap, that wasn't really my point. I just don't think our schools should be promoting incorrect English for anything other than what it is. It's NOT a foreign language. To your point, I can see where it and mine are intertwined. I guess in some ways, fear of offending minorities leads some people to create a tolerance that superseeds what we would extend to non-minorities, which to me is more condescending to them. If a southern white man abuses the English language and constantly says stupid things, we call them redneck, make a Deliverance joke, etc... While these are deragatory statements, they also imply that this man is inferior to what he is capable of being. When African-Americans misuse English, accepting it as a "foreign language" is like telling them that we'll be tolerant because we don't think they can do any better. Which is more insulting?

[Sephus]

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[ QUOTE ]
“Oh that’s different – they’re making a cultural statement”


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While I agree that is a load of crap, that wasn't really my point. I just don't think our schools should be promoting incorrect English for anything other than what it is. It's NOT a foreign language. To your point, I can see where it and mine are intertwined. I guess in some ways, fear of offending minorities leads some people to create a tolerance that superseeds what we would extend to non-minorities, which to me is more condescending to them. If a southern white man abuses the English language and constantly says stupid things, we call them redneck, make a Deliverance joke, etc... While these are deragatory statements, they also imply that this man is inferior to what he is capable of being. When African-Americans misuse English, accepting it as a "foreign language" is like telling them that we'll be tolerant because we don't think they can do any better. Which is more insulting?

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AAVE is not "incorrect" english. speaking a nonstandard dialect is not "abusing" english. it's just different.

you think they're making "mistakes" when actually they're just following a different set of rules. in many ways "ebonics" is more efficient than standard english, in both syntax and pronunciation.

bisonbison is right though, speakers of nonstandard dialects are (unfairly or not) handicapped when it comes to the job market, etc. so learning how to speak "standard american english" is important for american students.

[James Boston]

[ QUOTE ]
AAVE is not "incorrect" english. speaking a nonstandard dialect is not "abusing" english. it's just different.

you think they're making "mistakes" when actually they're just following a different set of rules. in many ways "ebonics" is more efficient than standard english, in both syntax and pronunciation.


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AAVE, as a form of colloquial speech or slang, is not my issue. I'm not claiming that I always use proper English, or that I never "abuse" the English language. I don't have a problem with how people speak to each other in conversation, or write in informal letters/e-mails. I do have a problem with propagating the idea that "nonstandard dialect" is a language unto itself. It's not. It is exactly what you said - nonstandard dialect. In its proper context, I don't think it should be frowned upon, but it's not a foreign language.

[Sephus]

im saying AAVE is not "misuse" of the enligsh language as you have called it.

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"For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language

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he has a point. students who only speak AAVE are better off learning SAE in a similar environment to that of spanish-speaking students learning english as a second language.

simply "correcting" their "mistakes" is an inadequate way for them to learn to speak "regular english."

i know a little about this (i basically have a linguistics degree and this issue is important) and i'm guessing the texeira guy really wants teachers to understand how AAVE works and to use this understanding to teach SAE. that's what he means by saying they should treat it as a legitimate "foreign" language.

[CRF250X]

It took me a few minutes to figure it out but now I understand and it's absolutely brilliant! It's simply another step on the path to eliminating the middle class.

Never let anyone tell you that your leaders don't know what they're doing.

CRF250X

[-Skeme-]

[ QUOTE ]
"For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language.'

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Hehe, yeah it's like any other foreign language.. except for the fact it's associated with drug dealers, thugs and total morons. If they're rallying to teach kids how to sound like an uneducated chump, they should also teach kids how to [censored] their pants and run into walls.

[B Dids]

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[ QUOTE ]
"For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language.'

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Hehe, yeah it's like any other foreign language.. except for the fact it's associated with drug dealers, thugs and total morons. If they're rallying to teach kids how to sound like an uneducated chump, they should also teach kids how to [censored] their pants and run into walls.

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There's really no need for this post or poster. Way to generalize an entire race fucksteak.

My current location is your fault.

[-Skeme-]

Do you not realize how stupid you sound? I didn't mention a race, did I? No, I didn't. The idea that I was referring to, or singling out an entire race with my statement was entirely your own. You do realize that more than one race speak ebonics?

Teaching broken english to students is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's completely ridiculous.

[B Dids]

It's funny.

When idiots are challenged on [censored] like that, they're always like "I didn't see race, you brought it up, why is this racial" like we're too dumb to see through their arguments.

Ebonics or AAVE (African American vernacular english) is about race, and any discussion that tries to ignore that is just foolish.

If you think that you could say what you said to any black person and try and convince them it wasn't about race, you're [censored] kidding yourself.

Again, the issue isn't teaching "broken english". It's about acknowleding that it exists so that you can work with it.

From wikipedia


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Proponents of various bills across the country, notably a resolution from the Oakland, California school board on December 18, 1996, desired to have Ebonics officially declared a language or dialect. At its last meeting, the lame duck Oakland school board unanimously passed the resolution before stepping down from their positions to the newly elected board, who held different political views. The new board modified the resolution and then effectively dropped it. Had the measure remained in force, it would have affected funding and education related issues.

The Oakland resolution declared that Ebonics was not English, and was not an Indo-European language at all, asserting that the speech of African American children belonged to "West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems". This and other assertions, particularly the statement that "African Language Systems are genetically based", contributed to a widespread reaction of incredulity and hostility. Supporters of the resolution later stated that "genetically" was not racism, but a piece of linguistic jargon.

Proponents of Ebonics instruction in public education believe that their proposals have been distorted by political debate and misunderstood by the general public. The belief underlying Ebonics education is that African American students would perform better in school and more easily learn standard American English, if textbooks and teachers acknowledged that AAVE was not a substandard version of standard American English, but a legitimate speech variety with its own grammatical rules and pronunciational norms.

For African American students whose primary language was Ebonics, the Oakland resolution mandated some instruction in that language, both for "maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language... and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills." Teachers were encouraged to recognize that the errors in standard American English that their students made were not the result of lack of intelligence or effort, but due instead to the fact that the language which they normally use is grammatically different from SAE. Rather than teaching standard English by proscribing non-standard usage, the idea was to teach standard English to Ebonics speaking students by showing them how to translate expressions from AAVE to standard American English.

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[-Skeme-]

Again, you are not responding to anything I said. My point was that ebonics is associated with thugs, drug dealers and uneducated persons. Ebonics is slang, whether you want to admit that or not. Slang is not proper, this is an undeniable fact. Pawning off slang as another form of communication is ridiculous. Should we also have Redneck 101 where students learn to speak in hillbilly jargon?


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Rather than teaching standard English by proscribing non-standard usage, the idea was to teach standard English to Ebonics speaking students by showing them how to translate expressions from AAVE to standard American English.

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And I don't know why you're quoting this crap when it's blatantly obvious that I was only responding to the quote posted by the OP.