California school district to "affirm" Ebonics

[RedImperator]

From what I've heard on the news ESL students usually do much worse in school if they are stuck in English only classes because they can't understand what the teacher is saying, which is not to say that they shouldn't be taught proper English as soon as possible so that they can be in English speaking class.

I haven't kept up on this and the results of the different types of teaching seem to go back and forth as to which is best. I just thought that the last I had heard that the ESL version eventually works better although in the begining it's tougher.

I most certainly can be wrong on this since, like I said, I haven't kept up on it, and it's been a few years since it was making big news down here.

The problem with the sink-or-swim approach is that nobody has any idea what to do with the kids who sink. There are multiple approaches to how to teach English as a seond language, though. From what I've seen, it seems it's best to try to get them into regular classes as soon as possible. With little kids and an intense ESL program, you can have them speaking fluently in less than a year. Older kids are trickier, because once they lose childrens' language acquisition skills, it's just as hard to teach them English as it is to teach Anglo teenagers Spanish.

In the case of Ebonics, you won't have the problem of older kids entering the system with no Standard English skills the way you do with new arrivals from Mexico. And it's easier to go between dialects than it is between languages. If their idea is to teach Ebonics speaking kids Standard English as a second language, then recognizing Ebonics is a good idea. The word "affirm" is what bothers me. It smells of mollycoddling them instead of telling them, "The people who will hire you for a job and read your college applications don't speak the way you do. You have to learn to speak like they do so they'll listen."

[Darth Wong]

Throughout the entire century, there has always been street slang which differed from proper English. At no time until now did schools teach that the street slang was a legitimate alternate version of the language. Apparently, it's different when the street slang is "black" instead of "Italian".

[Darth Servo]

A school district in Southern California approved the "affirmation and recognition" of Ebonics into its curriculum as a way to help black students improve academic performance.

Yes, help blacks do better in school, NOT by helping them learn proper grammar but by making poor language acceptable. Why don't we ALSO help the poor minorities by making 2+2=3 acceptable.

[Elfdart]

"Oh stewardess, I speak jive."

Sheeeeit!

Translation: "Golly!"

[DPDarkPrimus]

If they can't be arsed to speak English, then they shouldn't cry about not being able to get a proper job.

Pop THAT cap, homeboys.

[Nephtys]

Remember. When you can't do it, cut the standards. Creating or affirming an underclass is both fun and productive! I thought the purpose of public education was to make sure these people had skills they need. Learning proper English happens to be one of those skills. Hell, they should cut down creative writing or critical reading for poorer schools, before teaching kids a 'language' that makes them sound and feel dumb.

Anyway. This is more akin to a math class teaching 2+2 is a number that isn't greater than 4. And that's all you need to know...

[fgalkin]

How soon till we see this taught in the classroom?

To be, or not ta be: dat iz da question:
Whether 'tis nobler in da mind ta suffer
The slings an' arrows o' outrageous fortune,
Or ta take arms against uh sea o' troubles,
And by opposing end dem? To die: ta sleep;
No more; an' by uh sleep ta say we's end
The heart-ache an' da thousand natural shocks
That flesh iz heir ta, 'tis uh consummation
Devoutly ta be wish'd. To die, ta sleep;
To sleep: perchance ta dream: ay, dere'sda rub;
For in dat sleep o' death what dreams may come
When we's gots shuffled off dis here mortal coil,
Must give us pause: dere'sda respek, yo
That makes calamity o' so long life;
For who would bear da whips an' scorns o' tyme,
The oppressor'swrong, da proud nig'scontumely, whaaa?
The pangs o' despised love, da law'sdelay, muthafucka
The insolence o' office an' da spurns
That patient merit o' da unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With uh bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, nigga
To grunt an' sweat under uh weary life,
But dat da dread o' somethin' afta death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles da will
And makes us rather bear those ills we's gots
Than fly ta others dat we's know not o'?
Thus conscience do make cowards o' us all; biatch
And thus da native hue o' resolution
Is sicklied o'er wiff da pale cast o' thought,
And enterprises o' great pitch an' moment
With dis here regard they currents turn awry, nigga
And lose da name o' action.-- Soft ya now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all muh ma fuckin sins remember'd. ya'll is mad stupid, yo

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Lord Poe]

What a load of horse shit. Embracing a form of lazy, uneducated slang-speak as legitimate is something schools should be against.

What about Redneck? Should that be encouraged? Should the swiming team form up at the cee-ment pond for trials?

"Wha hail-farr, ah'm a-gonna go up to tha crik and do sum feeshin'!"

[Master of Ossus]

Fortunately, American schools do not own a monopoly on stupidity.

In other news, the California school system desperately needs revamping. Vote the fucking teachers' unions out.

[Rogue 9]

Hmmmm. The more I reread the article, the more I become convinced that they're not actually teaching Ebonics, but rather treating it as a separate language for the purpose of determining how the children are taught standard English. The following part of the article makes this nearly a certainty:

Len Cooper, coordinator of the pilot program at the two city schools, said Ebonics won't actually be incorporated into the program, because of its "stigma."

So no, they're not teaching Ebonics. I caught that as I was writing a blog entry on it (my first in two months) and had to rewrite a perfectly good rant halfway through.

[General Brock]

SANKOFAI sounds like an apronym designed to sound vaguely like a real African word, which of course they pervert the real significance thereof. This is why I hate all government usage of apronyms.

Sounds like a coffee or tea brand; Sancafe I think.

Given the entertainment media's fascination with making fringe things trendy, it would be hilarious if somehow ebonics actually caught on, developed more depth, and present modern day English goes the way of Olde English in a couple of hundred years.

[Spoonist]

Force them to use proper english.
And while we are at it force those other americans to use proper english as well.

[RedImperator]

Hmmmm. The more I reread the article, the more I become convinced that they're not actually teaching Ebonics, but rather treating it as a separate language for the purpose of determining how the children are taught standard English. The following part of the article makes this nearly a certainty:

Len Cooper, coordinator of the pilot program at the two city schools, said Ebonics won't actually be incorporated into the program, because of its "stigma."

So no, they're not teaching Ebonics. I caught that as I was writing a blog entry on it (my first in two months) and had to rewrite a perfectly good rant halfway through.

I've suggested this is possibly what's happening twice, and I've been ignored by everyone falling all over themselves to condemn Ebonics.

Ebonics gets a bad rap (ha!) because it's associated with a violent, self-destructive culture, anti-intellectualism, and a style of popular music that's unpopular here, and it has a stupid name. These are fair criticisms, but they don't change the fact that:

1) It's a dialect with its own vocabulary and internally self-consistent rules, and is being learned by children in the inner cities the same way kids in the East End of London pick up Cockney.

2) Kids who have never learned to speak standard English can't be expected to magically speak it because people who've spoken it their whole lives demand it.

I'm not saying kids SHOULDN'T be taught to speak standard English, because Ebonics carries a stigma that will get doors slammed in their faces regardless of what they're actually saying. But pretending Ebonics is just slang doesn't help anyone, especially the kids. Slang is easy to drop. Dialects aren't.

[Darth Yoshi]

Hell, no. That's fucking retarded. I mean, they banned Spanish from the classrooms, and now they're putting Ebonics in? What the fuck?

[Nephtys]

Hell, no. That's fucking retarded. I mean, they banned Spanish from the classrooms, and now they're putting Ebonics in? What the fuck?

They didn't ban spanish. They banned public schools teaching spanish as the main language first, english as a second language. So Math Courses and history courses were to be taught in English.

[Wicked Pilot]

If they can't be arsed to speak English, then they shouldn't cry about not being able to get a proper job.

Pop THAT cap, homeboys.

They don't get to choose their education. These are kids we're talking about, if they aren't taught proper english then it's not their fault they'll enter into the work force unprepared for worthwhile employment.

[HyperionX]

Ebonics does have roots in African languages, so you can't say it's just lazy English. It's a true English dialect. However I don't think we need to affirm it as another language, only a dialect.

[Gil Hamilton]

Ebonics does have roots in African languages, so you can't say it's just lazy English. It's a true English dialect. However I don't think we need to affirm it as another language, only a dialect.

What roots would that be? Almost all African-American people living in the United States by all rights can't even be called "African", due to not even their great grandfathers actually coming from Africa. Unless you want to be really convoluted and go back several hundred years, then add a healthy amount of speculation, you can't really connect Ebonics with African languages. Ebonics is a dialect of English, but it's a native dialect of English.

[RedImperator]

Ebonics does have roots in African languages, so you can't say it's just lazy English. It's a true English dialect. However I don't think we need to affirm it as another language, only a dialect.

What roots would that be? Almost all African-American people living in the United States by all rights can't even be called "African", due to not even their great grandfathers actually coming from Africa. Unless you want to be really convoluted and go back several hundred years, then add a healthy amount of speculation, you can't really connect Ebonics with African languages. Ebonics is a dialect of English, but it's a native dialect of English.

It's a modified Southern accent (lower class, uneducated Southern accent) with some African pronunciations and rhythms that have survived all the way from the slave trade days, and half a century of mutation in the ghettoes. Ebonics by all rights shouldn't exist, but throughout their history blacks have largely lived in closed, homogenous communitities (either by their choice or their neighbors'), where the dialect wasn't subsumed by standard English.

Though I can say that Ebonics is influenced by the variety of "white" English (for a lack of a better shorthand) around it. Yesterday I was in West Philadelphia and heard a street vendor hawking "ice cold woodder, fitty cent!" I don't think anyone's studied this, but probably every city has its own version of Ebonics. It could be Oakland Ebonics sounds as out of place in West Philadelphia as the Queen's English.

[Darth Wong]

If they can't be arsed to speak English, then they shouldn't cry about not being able to get a proper job.

Pop THAT cap, homeboys.

They don't get to choose their education. These are kids we're talking about, if they aren't taught proper english then it's not their fault they'll enter into the work force unprepared for worthwhile employment.

I seriously doubt that their teachers speak "ebonics", or that their school textbooks are written using it.

[Darth Wong]

It's a modified Southern accent (lower class, uneducated Southern accent) with some African pronunciations and rhythms that have survived all the way from the slave trade days, and half a century of mutation in the ghettoes. Ebonics by all rights shouldn't exist, but throughout their history blacks have largely lived in closed, homogenous communitities (either by their choice or their neighbors'), where the dialect wasn't subsumed by standard English.

Though I can say that Ebonics is influenced by the variety of "white" English (for a lack of a better shorthand) around it. Yesterday I was in West Philadelphia and heard a street vendor hawking "ice cold woodder, fitty cent!" I don't think anyone's studied this, but probably every city has its own version of Ebonics. It could be Oakland Ebonics sounds as out of place in West Philadelphia as the Queen's English.

I'm still not seeing any justification to legitimize this "dialect" as something other than illiteracy. Do you see anyone writing books this way?

[RedImperator]

It's a modified Southern accent (lower class, uneducated Southern accent) with some African pronunciations and rhythms that have survived all the way from the slave trade days, and half a century of mutation in the ghettoes. Ebonics by all rights shouldn't exist, but throughout their history blacks have largely lived in closed, homogenous communitities (either by their choice or their neighbors'), where the dialect wasn't subsumed by standard English.

Though I can say that Ebonics is influenced by the variety of "white" English (for a lack of a better shorthand) around it. Yesterday I was in West Philadelphia and heard a street vendor hawking "ice cold woodder, fitty cent!" I don't think anyone's studied this, but probably every city has its own version of Ebonics. It could be Oakland Ebonics sounds as out of place in West Philadelphia as the Queen's English.

I'm still not seeing any justification to legitimize this "dialect" as something other than illiteracy. Do you see anyone writing books this way?

What has that got to do with anything? It exists, it's spoken, and there's a large number of young children who grow up not knowing how to speak anything else. I'm really not understanding where the objections are coming from, especially since it seems likely part of the Oakland school district's plan is to teach the children who speak it as if they're ESL children so they CAN speak proper English. Why is it wrong to "legitimize" it, if that means acknowledging what it is so you can better deal with the problems associated with it?

[18-Till-I-Die]

I think part of the 'objection', comes from a bit of sour grapes. A sort of nose-up, my-language-or-die mentality you see a lot when people talk about imigrants too, especially say Hispanics.

Personally, they teach them normal English, i dont see a problem. You cant just cross your arms and say, "Nuh-uh, doesn't exist, nope i dont accept it" if like half the class speaks it. So why not try the ESL approach, teach them normal English too, it cant hurt it'll actually make them more well rounded i'd guess.

[Jalinth]

I'm still not seeing any justification to legitimize this "dialect" as something other than illiteracy. Do you see anyone writing books this way?

Do you see anyone writing in Cockney, or Jamaican English, Southern American English, etc...? A dialect is primarily spoken, not written.

The legitimate question is has this version of English become so entrenched in parts of the US population to be a full blown dialect? Whether you think this dialect should be abolished is irrelevant as dialects (as opposed to slang) do not die easily or readily. If Ebonics is an actual dialect, then school districts have two choices: deal with it, or put blinders on and ignore it. Personally, I think option 1 is the only sensible option. How schools deal with it is a valid question, but suggesting that governments just ignore the problem is ridiculous. Which is Red's point.

If necessary, an ESL type format can allow them to speak the standard American English either in their state or some "normalized" version, and their own dialect. Call it the English system where people can switch dialects depends on who they are speaking to

[Darth Wong]

I'm still not seeing any justification to legitimize this "dialect" as something other than illiteracy. Do you see anyone writing books this way?

Do you see anyone writing in Cockney, or Jamaican English, Southern American English, etc...? A dialect is primarily spoken, not written.

No. I also don't see any schools treating these as languages rather than improper grammar which is not to be used in English class.