There is no physical reason that Hispanics, Indo-Asians, Arabs, or African-Americans who are born here in America cannot speak proper English.
Especially having taught my share of these sorts of folks in graduate school, you've hit the nail on the head (again!). But overall, I agree with what your message is in this entry -- moreover, I think you've put in words how I really feel about this particular subject matter. Schooling should not be solely to blame for those individuals who choose to display their ignorance and "coolness" over their education (perhaps you should add to your coolness entries something about lack of grammar). It's really quite sad.
Now the real question is, what do we do...?Honestly, I don't know if there is much that can be done. With the politics in this country leaning for acceptance of foreign folks not speaking proper English -- so much so as to encourage bilingual education so that Spanish speakers can learn in our American schools without having to learn America's dominant language, English -- it seems
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First, the teacher could request that the parents help the boy at home by having him converse in English.I'm sorry, but I would be extremely offended if I sent my child to pubic school and at a parent-teacher conference the teacher told me that my son, although he has a command of Christmas, does not understand the importance of Kwaanza. So her suggestion is that I stop celebrating Christmas, quit making references to God in the home, and teach Kwaanza as much as I can. Please! I don't think I would be out of my rights to be totally offended by this suggestion and appalled at the insensitivity of the teacher. Why would it be any less offensive to suggest ripping someone's culture and language out of their home
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Why would it be any less offensive to suggest ripping someone's culture and language out of their home?
I'm not suggesting that the parents rip their culture out of their home. What I am proposing is that the teacher ask (and mind you I said that the teacher request, not demand) that the parents set aside perhaps an hour out of their evening at home (which if you put the child as being at home and with their parents for 6 hours, isn't a large amount of time) to practice conversing in English with the boy. And more specifically, work with the boy on the assignments they might have assigned them. For example, let's say that the boy is learning how to count money. What the parents could do is -- speaking in English -- play banker with the boy, and ask him to count certain amounts of money and tell them how much money is on the table or in their hands. Or ask him to do simple arithmetic using money, so that the boy can practice his math skills, while improving his English.
Heck, the Amish do it all the time. They speak German in the
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practice conversing in English with the boy. Except that some of them (maybe many of them) don't speak English themselves, so this would be quite difficult. Also, I would still be offended if a teacher asked me to do this. Just like I would be offended if someone asked me to set aside my Christianity for an hour and teach my child Hinduism and only Hinduism without bringing any of my Christian culture into it. I understand your point, and I agree that that would be the ideal situation, but I also believe that this would have to be a self-motivated move; a teacher's request would come across as culturally insensitive no matter how or under what spirit it was done.
and do not revert to using Yiddish (or some other form of a German-English hybrid dialect) when trying to converse with those who are not members of the Amish community. They speak Deutch (or Pennsylvania Dutch), not Yiddish (that is a Jewish-English hybrid). And actually, yes they do revert. In fact, they are extremely elitist in that sense that they will speak Deutch
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First of all, I think that you ARE subtly including accent. I have a friend who is from Kentucky. She has a very strong southern accent. And she and I have discussed how on numerous occassions she experiences racism because of her accent. Whatever she says is mocked back to her, even if it is a very intelligent comment. And she has a PhD. But it is still done to her. We have also discussed how Appalacia is the last group that is safe for everyone to be racist against (but that's another point entirely). The point is, she DOES get racist-motivated comments made against her for her accent.
I will assume -- perhaps unfairly -- that you are uneducatedThis is an unfair assumption, because you are assuming that anything outside of your understanding of "education" is un-educated. You have a mainstream, white-man understanding of education. What you are suggesting is that an other culture subsume themselves ("Uncle Tom" themselves) to your idea of culture. That's not fair. You are putting
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"This is an unfair assumption, because you are assuming that anything outside of your understanding of "education" is un-educated. You have a mainstream, white-man understanding of education. What you are suggesting is that an other culture subsume themselves ("Uncle Tom" themselves) to your idea of culture. That's not fair. You are putting forth a Booker T. Washington idea of culture and totally discounting WEB DuBois' ideas of creating your own culture. Look into it. I'm not saying that I side completely with DuBois, but I certainly get where he's coming from."
First of all, I think that you ARE subtly including accent. I have a friend who is from Kentucky. She has a very strong southern accent. And she and I have discussed how on numerous occassions she experiences racism because of her accent. Whatever she says is mocked back to her, even if it is a very intelligent comment. And she has a PhD. But it is still done to her. We have also discussed how Appalacia is the last group that is safe for everyone to be racist against (but that's another point entirely). The point is, she DOES get racist-motivated comments made against her for her accent. This does not make sense: You claim that I DO include accent, and you then site an example of someone else. ???
We have a guy in my lab from W. VA whose accent coming in was very "slow"-sounding. I never once considered him less intelligent or teased him, even though he spoke slowly. Not everyone does that. (Some in our lab teased him, yes, although no one ever considered him unintelligent.)
I understood you as saying that accent should not be included in this diatribe; I was arguing that you ARE including accent when you talk about these things (or at least the idea that others sound less intelligent with an accent), and that that is a type of racist assumption.
Maybe I was unclear or I didn't understand what you were saying in the first place.
cool...a lot of times rap can be underrated as a cultural art form, but it certainly takes skill and speaks truly in a lot of cases about cultural values and cultural struggles. I'm not necessarily a fan, but I'm also not necessarily a fan of opera, either.
I definitely was exaggerating there with rap. I'll go and edit my entry when I get a chance to make the argument better. I have nothing against rap as a communication form. It's just that so much of rap that I hear played on popular radio in cab rides or from load speakers from cars at lights is about "niggers" and "hos" and parties and such.
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Classic!
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Especially having taught my share of these sorts of folks in graduate school, you've hit the nail on the head (again!). But overall, I agree with what your message is in this entry -- moreover, I think you've put in words how I really feel about this particular subject matter. Schooling should not be solely to blame for those individuals who choose to display their ignorance and "coolness" over their education (perhaps you should add to your coolness entries something about lack of grammar). It's really quite sad.
Now the real question is, what do we do...?Honestly, I don't know if there is much that can be done. With the politics in this country leaning for acceptance of foreign folks not speaking proper English -- so much so as to encourage bilingual education so that Spanish speakers can learn in our American schools without having to learn America's dominant language, English -- it seems ( ... )
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I'm not suggesting that the parents rip their culture out of their home. What I am proposing is that the teacher ask (and mind you I said that the teacher request, not demand) that the parents set aside perhaps an hour out of their evening at home (which if you put the child as being at home and with their parents for 6 hours, isn't a large amount of time) to practice conversing in English with the boy. And more specifically, work with the boy on the assignments they might have assigned them. For example, let's say that the boy is learning how to count money. What the parents could do is -- speaking in English -- play banker with the boy, and ask him to count certain amounts of money and tell them how much money is on the table or in their hands. Or ask him to do simple arithmetic using money, so that the boy can practice his math skills, while improving his English.
Heck, the Amish do it all the time. They speak German in the ( ... )
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Except that some of them (maybe many of them) don't speak English themselves, so this would be quite difficult. Also, I would still be offended if a teacher asked me to do this. Just like I would be offended if someone asked me to set aside my Christianity for an hour and teach my child Hinduism and only Hinduism without bringing any of my Christian culture into it. I understand your point, and I agree that that would be the ideal situation, but I also believe that this would have to be a self-motivated move; a teacher's request would come across as culturally insensitive no matter how or under what spirit it was done.
and do not revert to using Yiddish (or some other form of a German-English hybrid dialect) when trying to converse with those who are not members of the Amish community. They speak Deutch (or Pennsylvania Dutch), not Yiddish (that is a Jewish-English hybrid). And actually, yes they do revert. In fact, they are extremely elitist in that sense that they will speak Deutch ( ... )
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First of all, I think that you ARE subtly including accent. I have a friend who is from Kentucky. She has a very strong southern accent. And she and I have discussed how on numerous occassions she experiences racism because of her accent. Whatever she says is mocked back to her, even if it is a very intelligent comment. And she has a PhD. But it is still done to her. We have also discussed how Appalacia is the last group that is safe for everyone to be racist against (but that's another point entirely). The point is, she DOES get racist-motivated comments made against her for her accent.
I will assume -- perhaps unfairly -- that you are uneducatedThis is an unfair assumption, because you are assuming that anything outside of your understanding of "education" is un-educated. You have a mainstream, white-man understanding of education. What you are suggesting is that an other culture subsume themselves ("Uncle Tom" themselves) to your idea of culture. That's not fair. You are putting ( ... )
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Agreed with this.
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This does not make sense: You claim that I DO include accent, and you then site an example of someone else. ???
We have a guy in my lab from W. VA whose accent coming in was very "slow"-sounding. I never once considered him less intelligent or teased him, even though he spoke slowly. Not everyone does that. (Some in our lab teased him, yes, although no one ever considered him unintelligent.)
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Maybe I was unclear or I didn't understand what you were saying in the first place.
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Outkast - many of their lyrics are intelligent and clever, and their music is good too, in my opinion.
Here's a couple of articles I found on the structure of ebonics that may be of interest: http://baldwinets.tripod.com/sms/ebonics.pdf (PDF)
http://www.panikon.com/phurba/morph.html
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