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

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]OH MY GOD -- YOU JUST SAID BLACK FOLK LEARN TO SPEAK STANDARD ENGLISH FROM THEIR WHITE TEACHERS AND PEERS!! 
Newsflash black people are not born speaking "ebonics! 
How ignorant can one person be[/quote]

That's not what I meant to say.  There are plenty of black people who speak in Standard English--it is a class thing more than anyone else.  But since people on here are concerned about the poor minority kids who don't get exposure to standard English at home, I was just saying that in the schools that people are discussing here, even if the teacher doesn't use standard grammar, they get plenty of exposure at school.  There are plenty of upper middle class black people in DC in particular who speak standard English.  And there are plenty of white people who have rural accents and grammatical constructs that sound "uneducated."

The term "African American vernacular English" comes from what linguists describe it as in academic literature instead of "ebonics" which is riddled with controversy.  Essentially, if you talk to a linguist, as a dialect there's nothing "wrong" with it.  It has internally consistent grammar, although it isn't the dialect that is associated with the wealthy and powerful in the country.  Many of the issues with it being English that is "wrong" rather than English that is correct but a specific dialect has to do with longstanding racial and class undertones in this country.  In Switzerland, for example, there are a number of regional dialects that deviate significantly grammatically from Standard German, but people use those spoken dialects and embrace it as part of their heritage (and written and formal communication is done in Standard German).

[quote]Did you listen to Rachel Genteal during the Martin trial? Lots of people could not understand her. That's the problem.[/quote]

I am a white person, and I didn't have any issues understanding Rachel Genteal during the Martin trial.  Unlike some of my peers, I didn't need to turn the subtitles on when watching the Wire.  I think in large part it is laziness on white people's part saying "OH THOSE DUMB POOR GHETTO BLACKS WITH THEIR INCORRECT ENGLISH" rather than trying to understand what they are saying.  And I think this has a long history of unfortunate racial undertones that people sound be less judgmental of.  In the black community, the status quo is the status quo, so I think they should be encouraged to speak in a fashion that is consistent with how people speak in upper middle class America if they want upward mobility.  But there is a side of me that fails to understand how other nations (like Switzerland) can have cultures where dialect is spoken without these undertones of "my way is the best way."[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics