Languages of Power
I've been immersed in languages of power Discourse (yes the capital D is important) over the last couple of weeks in my Elementary & Secondary Education as well as my Psychology of Reading classes. We've been discussing different models of culturally responsive education as well. Initially, conversations about what we now refer to as language differences were universally considered deficits.
Now, through the work of ethnographers like Shirley Bryce Heath and multicultural education scholars like James Banks, Geneva Gay and Lisa Delpit societal perceptions have shifted to a difference model. The debate continues to rage about what we ought to do with the difference.
Do we consider the fact that students from communities of color come to the classroom with different language skill sets and ways of engaging a case of cultural mismatch? Which would lead us to believe that students need to be explicity taught how to engage with mainstream language. Delpit calls this code switching. We all do this to one extent or another. When you're hanging out with your snowboarding buddies and you use language specific to the sport- you've code switched.
I code switch on a daily basis between Caribbean Vernacular English to American Standard English. Now you can imagine that simply the names connote a particular power structure or a heirachy. One is 'standard' and the other is a 'vernacular.' One is the norm and the other represent a deviation that is tied directly to my cultural context.
Words have power. The names that we give to things are not inert significations of an object or a concept. They have the power to shape the way we construct concepts and gather information about our world.
What brought all this on?
I spent Friday at the World Rhythm festival at the Seattle Center. It's an annual gathering of people moving to rhythms and making beats on drums, didgeridoos and all sorts of percussion instruments. It's a wonderfully eclectic collection of people. There are workshops, drum circles and performances. As you might imagine, the audience and workshop participants are largely white while the workshop leaders are a healthy combination of people of color.
Here's what got me up on my soap box. While listening to some white workshop participants debrief a session we'd all attended earlier in the morning. They were complaining about the instruction. Finally one of them said "Well, native drum instructors don't teach in ways that are very conducive to learning."
I was blown away.
Never mind that 'native' drummers represent a lineage of knowledge, that their ways of knowing and teaching are rooted in the countries where these instruments originated. Never mind issues of cultural appropriation, never mind about histories of oppression and colonization.
I want to know what there's a word for African people who teach drums and not a word that delineates non-African teachers as the opposite of norm. This is language of power in action.
Now, through the work of ethnographers like Shirley Bryce Heath and multicultural education scholars like James Banks, Geneva Gay and Lisa Delpit societal perceptions have shifted to a difference model. The debate continues to rage about what we ought to do with the difference.
Do we consider the fact that students from communities of color come to the classroom with different language skill sets and ways of engaging a case of cultural mismatch? Which would lead us to believe that students need to be explicity taught how to engage with mainstream language. Delpit calls this code switching. We all do this to one extent or another. When you're hanging out with your snowboarding buddies and you use language specific to the sport- you've code switched.
I code switch on a daily basis between Caribbean Vernacular English to American Standard English. Now you can imagine that simply the names connote a particular power structure or a heirachy. One is 'standard' and the other is a 'vernacular.' One is the norm and the other represent a deviation that is tied directly to my cultural context.
Words have power. The names that we give to things are not inert significations of an object or a concept. They have the power to shape the way we construct concepts and gather information about our world.
What brought all this on?
I spent Friday at the World Rhythm festival at the Seattle Center. It's an annual gathering of people moving to rhythms and making beats on drums, didgeridoos and all sorts of percussion instruments. It's a wonderfully eclectic collection of people. There are workshops, drum circles and performances. As you might imagine, the audience and workshop participants are largely white while the workshop leaders are a healthy combination of people of color.
Here's what got me up on my soap box. While listening to some white workshop participants debrief a session we'd all attended earlier in the morning. They were complaining about the instruction. Finally one of them said "Well, native drum instructors don't teach in ways that are very conducive to learning."
I was blown away.
Never mind that 'native' drummers represent a lineage of knowledge, that their ways of knowing and teaching are rooted in the countries where these instruments originated. Never mind issues of cultural appropriation, never mind about histories of oppression and colonization.
I want to know what there's a word for African people who teach drums and not a word that delineates non-African teachers as the opposite of norm. This is language of power in action.