To this end the curriculum itself must continually stress students' ethnic, sexual, and especially racial, identity. The Oakland board enjoins its teachers to prize ebonics because of its presumed strong links to the African race. In schools where this emphasis dominates, weak self-esteem and racial identity become the only causes of poor performance that really count. In addition to the pedagogy of self-esteem, ebonics owes a good deal to constructivism, or the notion that learners intuitively construct their own learning. In the case of language, a student builds his own linguistic patterns and then advances to grasp the formal conventions of a proper language.
Degenerate constructivism is a perfect match for self-esteem education.
C onstructivism also dovetails neatly with group-identity education. Similarly, educators obsessed with group identity excuse ignorance exclusively as the result of racial discrimination. As for ebonics, it shares supremely in the constructivist impulse that simply shrinks from telling students when they are wrong. Candace de Russy is a contributing editor of Crisis.