From: q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Education
Date: 3 Jan 93 15:31:46 EST
Distribution: soc
Organization: Cornell University

djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes: 
> In article <1992Dec28.190119.16645@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
> 
> #         This issue has been dealt with in a very unusual way by
> #
> #                 Peter Farb, in a book "Word Play"
> #
> # He had a most excellent idea on this subject.  May be part of the
> # ANSWER. He's a linguist who claims that most black children speak a
> # dialect of standard American English.  He refers to it as Black
> # English. It has different grammatical structures to it, and since
> # [deleted stuff]
> # Farb recommends, in effect, that black kids, besides becoming
> # bicultural, need to be educated to be bi-dialect-ical.
> 
> This idea was hot in the early 70s -- and notice that Farb's Word Play
> was written in '74.  It was tried out in the Ann Arbor, Michigan,
> school system, as I remember, but as far as I know, it was pretty much
> a failure.
> 
> But the whole thing may have been a wild goose chase.  It's not at all
> unusual, even in industrialized countries (France, GErmany, Italy,
> Taiwan, and many others) for kids to suddenly have to learn a new
> dialect, which may be much farther from their home dialect than black
> English is from "white" English, and in some countries, like India and
> many African countries, education is in a totally different language,
> like English or French.  Yet these kids adapt quickly and learn their
> lessons.
> 
>
	Thanks for your post!  I'm glad you've seen Farb's book.
	He cited anecdotal pilot sort of experiments that showed
	that black kids did learn reading faster when the dialect
	issue was dealt with.  One is tempted to dismiss this idea
	by mentioning that some kids don't even speak English at all,
	but do learn to read properly.  But, as he explains, that is
	what is so insidious about the whole thing.  The dialect is
	a handicap (albeit a small one) but since no one is conscious
	of this handicap (including the teacher) they start the kids
	off on the wrong foot.  I don't think that special books are
	needed, just a little extra very explicit advice to the kids
	about the new grammar that they need to be conscious of.
	(this is reminicient of how you teach kids a foreign language...
	grammar is mentioned from the beginning)  Usually, when 
	everyone speaks the same dialect and grammar this is never
	mentioned and the teacher expects it to come naturally
	(unconsciously).  When it doesn't come naturally the teacher
	says the kids must be stupid!

	A little bit of humaneness *is* needed.  Don't underestimate
	how easy it is for kids to get mixed up about what the teacher
	wants...and really suffer for the most trivial expenses.
	
	Here's my personal story with this.  I read perfectly well,
	but I had a teacher who spoke with a Boston-Hahvahd accent
	(and my accent is midwestern, suitable for newscasters)
	who insisted that I emulate his accent...but he didn't tell
	me that precisely.  When I read outloud he'd stop me and
	scream WRONG; point to some word and scream "say it, say it"
	I would repeat the word and he'd scream more and more
	that I was stupid and couldn't even read right.  I got
	abused that by today's standards would probably constitute
	a lawsuit.  Anyway, after about 3 weeks I realized that 
	he wanted me to *pronounce* the words as he said them, rather
	than merely read them.  It was really frightening. 

> Personally, I think the experts ought to stop looking for a magic
> bullet and just admit that kids aren't going to learn when everyone in
> their life is telling them that it's not important.
>

	Agreed,but are you sure that this is the only or even
	the main reasons for troubled inner city schools.  Theres
	also been lots of immigrant kids who seem to do ok and
	their parents tell them education isn't important too.
 	
	The above suggestion wasn't intended to be
	the be-all end-all magic bullet.  It is just something
	that parents can perhaps warn their kids about.

	I suspose that if parents were this sensitive to the delicate
	psychological issues of going to public school then much
	of the other problems wouldn't exist either....oh well.

	But perhaps some of this may be of value to parents
	who happen to be reading this newsgroup.  I only wanted
	to make a *concrete* suggestion.a

SteveS


 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american