Nobody anywhere in this thread has challenged the realpolitik, the entire thread is premised on the idea that in our society everyone needs fluency in Standard English. You have presented this straw man so many times that you could feed a donkey for a month.
Where we differ is in whether teaching fluency in Standard English is best accomplished in a milieu of respect for cultural diversity, or whether we should take a supremacist approach of treating minority dialects as a cultural burden. Historically, the latter view has been widespread, to the point that some black parents may have felt that the only pragmatic path to success for their children has been to encourage them to abandon their cultural linguistic roots altogether. That doesn’t make it a morally acceptable “solution”, and the evidence is that it isn’t even the best pragmatic approach to improving kids’ fluency in Standard English.
The fundamental point of the article, and of most of the posters in this thread, octopus, is that the best way to make sure every kid learns fluency in SAE is to be respectful and thoughtful and knowledgeable of cultural realities like AAVE, and take them into account when teaching, and not belittle, dismiss, or ignore these sorts of cultural realities. What part of that do you find problematic?
Well, the teacher should probably start by correcting students with the more fundamental misconception that data about geologic time are in the same category as language. And yes, this will be in the test.
No. For many people, if not most, religious beliefs are just as much a part of their cultural realities as is language. Why does the religious aspect of cultural identity get so easily dismissed in your “analysis”?
What are you advocating for? The article suggests that educators teach the facts about English dialects like AAVE and SAE if a significant number of students are AAVE only, to give them a better chance of gaining SAE fluency.
Do you advocate that schools teach fiction instead of science?
If a mythical belief is part of somebody’s religious/cultural identity, that’s not part of science class.
A science teacher’s job is to teach science. If somebody presents a truth claim in science class, the provenance of the claim doesn’t matter. It’s the science teacher’s job to teach the class to consider that claim on its merits, to consider the evidence and use the scientific method.
Are teachers making enough of an effort to make American students aware of the differences between their regional dialect, with its quaint vocabulary and Websterized spelling, and Standard English, the global lingua franca of civilized discourse and communication in the new millennium? How are parents dealing with it? What proportion of the kids learn to hide their stigmata and conform? Food for thought.
And an English teacher’s job is to teach standard English. It’s the best way to prepare them for college entrance exams, vocational tests, job interviews, and on-the-job success.
I teach science which has its own language, syntax, vocabulary etc. You bet there is a time to correct word usage, how to write properly on the scientific passive voice, and use of jargon. That time is not when the students are just beginning to come to grips with complex ideas and are making sense of material they are beginning to learn. If I corrected them over and over, or made fun of them for using a term wrong, or over-emphasized spelling errors, they would shut down, be afraid to ask questions and learn nothing. Most of the time the errors are because they are using traditional narrative writing or speaking and haven’t adapted to standard scientific format. They’re not wrong, but it’s not correct for the field. Teaching them standard scientific format will come, but it comes later.
So yes, overlooking 1+1 be 2 is fine, if you actually want them to learn the math. Once they begin to feel confident in the math you then bring them along to standard English and explain when its use of expected and when it’s ok to not use it.
That’s true of some people, of course. But language is one of the few areas in modern society where decent people hold ideas that are essentially supremacist, although of course most of them don’t see it that way. In part that’s because so few people learn any linguistics, and even well educated people generally have profound misconceptions about the nature of language. I linked to a Language Log article earlier, The Social Psychology of Linguistic Naming and Shaming. In discussing trivial matters that are essentially stylistic preferences among variants, or perhaps a question of formal or informal register, people will express their misplaced absolutist conviction with astonishing bile, insisting (say) that it’s an ignorant error to use “who” rather than “whom”. One of the surest ways to get a thousand comments on a thread is to ask people to tell us their pet language peeves, to tell us how other people are doing it wrong. By comparison, how many responses would you get to “post your favorite example of beautiful or elegant prose”?
That’s why I butt heads with prescriptivists on here more often that I like, because I think it’s critically important to grasp when (and how, if you’re a teacher) it’s appropriate to call something an “error” in language. It’s the same fundamental misconception writ large that underlies the historical widespread perception of AAVE as an “inferior” or “ignorant” version of “proper” English.
(No doubt this comment will prompt octopus to come back for a fifth time with “So you’re saying it’s not important teach kids Standard English in school?”)
This has probably been covered, but AAVE has a distinct grammar. Some of the verb tenses are quite different from “white” North American English. It’s definitely a dialect. It’s not a completely different language, though.
What the OP is talking about is “code-switching,” and classes in code-switching have been around for a while. They’re a good idea.
The article is written by somebody with a PhD in speech pathology; she is herself a native speaker of AAE with direct personal experience of growing up among AAE speakers; and extensive practical experience dealing with parents and students and researching and developing a teaching curriculum.
You, on the other hand, have done nothing but pull some unsupported ideas that conform to your prejudices out of thin air. But you think by just saying “I don’t like your evidence”, it places the burden on iiandyiiii to make a better argument?
At least do us the courtesy of saying what ideas in the article you disagree with, and whether you have any basis beyond prejudice for disagreeing with them.