More on Ebonics and the Racial Achievement Gap
Here is a
short piece by someone who "gets it" when it comes to how to get an education.
It has not been helpful that LAUSD officials, as well as members of the school board, have allowed the district to become a sounding board for all sorts of suspect theories related to children "of color." Just one of those theories that have gained traction is that "black learners" react in different and unique ways to teaching -- different, that is, from the way other students react. This argument makes the claim that black students think in ways that are distinct from ways white students, in particular, think.
But isn't this a twist on the pseudo-science of old, which claimed that efforts to educate blacks would be fruitless because their capacity to learn was different from that of whites? Why is this argument acceptable today simply because it is being advanced by minority "multiculturalists"? The view that blacks and whites somehow interpret learning differently is -- in part -- a holdover from the silly debates surrounding "ebonics" that raged throughout the 1990s and that continue to handicap discussions of urban education to this very day.
Some 20 years after an onslaught of multicultural teaching techniques and the obsessive celebration of racial and cultural differences, are we actually supposed to believe that today's L.A. schools are inhospitable environments for virtually every ethnic group with the exception of the district's few remaining non-Latino white students? That seems hardly believable.
Evidence of the tendency to make use of crackpot theories was graphically displayed recently when one local high school attempted to hold a discussion about the achievement gap. The discussion went fairly well until one of the many downtown minions of the LAUSD, who had been invited to speak, announced that the problem of the achievement gap was -- drum roll, please -- mainly that of insensitive, uncaring white teachers.
There's more and it all makes sense.
Labels: ebonics, education, multiculturalism
What? Ebonics Again?
I remember the first time Ebonics were introduced. The entire concept was roundly ridiculed, although it was more of an attempt to teach it to the teachers to better understand their Black students.
Now some genius had decided that Black students would be better served if they were taught in
Ebonics. In other words, instead of demanding that these students and their families take the responsibility to work for an education, the San Bernardino City Unified School District will dumb down the curriculum to bring it down, um, exactly how far? I don't care what anyone says about Ebonics being another language or another dialect. That may be true. But, what's also true, is that Ebonics is not spoken in the halls of power, or in general American society. By using Ebonics as the latest crutch for poor black children, they are condemning another generation to poverty. A better policy would be one that actually taught these children the rudiments of Standard English using a good phonetic program (Riggs, surprisingly enough comes to mind). Education is hard work and we should realize by now, after all these years of falling test scores, and rising rates of illitercy, dumbing down the curriculum, while inventing new educational crutches doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work.
But what do I know? I'm not a sociologist. I'm only a teacher.
I've been teaching middle class, lower middle class, and poor black children for many years now. From personal experience I can say that you don't raise a child up by going down to their level, but by helping them to rise up to a higher level. In order to do this, I've always demanded Standard English in my students' writing and speaking. And yes, some students do get very frustrated when I make them repeat what they've just said incorrectly, correctly (and yes, Ebonics is incorrect English in my classroom). Some will clam up, refusing to talk, and withdraw their question, until I encourage them to try again.
At one point, I was waiting to be called a racist by resentful parents, but the opposite has happened. I've been thanked for insisting on high standards. One father told me derisively, he didn't want his children learning Ebonics. A student who preferred Ebonics accused me of wanting my students to sound educated. She was partially right. I want people to
know that they are educated.
I'd like to know if the geniuses who are pressing to adopt Ebonics will cry "racism" when the products of this program can't get jobs because they speak like they're illiterate street people and don't have the skills they need to succeed because it didn't fit into the Ebonics program.
Labels: ebonics, education
CHALLAH AKBAR
