Reply to Does your preschool/pre-K teacher speak using correct grammar?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I repeat what the AA teacher said when we were told to "accept" Ebonics::These children will never get good jobs if we don't teach them to speak properly.[/quote]

This is certainly a complex and loaded issue.  I agree that inner city kids should learn how to speak standard English if they want to blend into mainstream society and have professional jobs in general--how you speak impacts how others perceive you.  However, there are certainly people who speak in a black dialect who are doing quite well--tell Cornell West and Tavis Smiley that their careers are lacking.  But what I was arguing is the demographic for whom this is a complete non-issue are upper middle class white people who send their kids to diverse, but high performing preschools at at the age of 3 or 4 start testing the waters with words like "ain't".  By the time they are in school or able to get jobs, they will have long learned that if they speak standard English, that is what opens doors in most of society.  I think white upper middle class parents are hand wringing over an issue that is a non-issue for them.  At schools where there are high populations of affluent upper middle class people, even more middle class and AA kids get plenty of exposure to standard English through white teachers and their white peers.  Where this is an issue is not the high performing schools, it is the schools in poor inner city areas.

And furthermore--why is speaking in a "black" way limiting?  Because white people say so, and white people are dominant in positions of power in society.  If you expose your children to kids of all different backgrounds, then perhaps in the future this lingering stereotype will not be as prevalent.  It has to work both ways--black students learning how to speak standard English and white people putting their prejudices behind them.  By freaking out about a bit of african american vernacular English, you're pretty much perpetuating the status quo.  Teach your children how to speak standard English.  But don't worry too much about "deprogramming" them--society will do that soon enough.[/quote]

I was with you until your second paragraph. This isn't bad because it's associated with black people. It's bad because it's incorrect grammar. If you travel anywhere in the world and meet someone who speaks English, it won't matter what the color of your skin is; you'll make a bad impression as an American speaking in a grammatically incorrect manner. I don't want to undo have to undo mistakes learned at school, especially those that shouldn't be taught in the first place. I will do it, of course, but it's not too much to ask someone with a college degree to speak grammatically correct English while teaching.[/quote]

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