Agreed. But saying that it not a counterargument, is it? Again, if you have something worthwhile to say other than “this doesn’t fit my prejudices”, state which of her points you disagree with, and your evidence and counterarguments.
I don’t think I’ve said that once. No need to falsify quotes. I will say it’s sad but not at all surprising to see more intellectually dishonest attitudes attributing a desire to see better language education at home as blackophobia.
The article is about schools and education policies, not “education at home”. Further, your plan to have non-SAE fluent parents teach their kids fluency in SAE sounds about as likely as non-Mandarin fluent parents teaching their kids fluency in Mandarin Chinese. The researcher identified a problem – many kids don’t gain fluency in SAE – and a potential solution. It seems to me that having trained education professionals who are actually fluent in SAE teach kids SAE seems a lot more likely to succeed than having non-SAE fluent parents who are not education professionals, and likely are extremely busy already, try and teach their kids SAE. If you disagree with this, what sentence in this post do you disagree with?
Education is not limited to schools and you shouldn’t try to artificially compartmentalize it like that. Successful cultural traits include strong emphasis on education t home and at school.
Now, should we not stigmatize children? Yes.
Should we not stigmatize a language/dialect? Yes.
Should we take a holistic approach to education while rationally allocating limited resources? Yes.
So, I don’t disagree with you iiandyiiii. I’m merely pointing out that even without the schools, parents can start acting now. Does that help all children? No. But what policy does.
Advocate for parents to do something if you want, but if I understand the article correctly, it will be doomed to fail for some children whose parents are incapable of teaching fluency in SAE. Your advocacy doesn’t actually conflict with what the article suggests, so I’m having trouble with why you’re so resistant to a potential solution that, according to the article, has actually made some progress when it’s been tried.
The article specifically describes how the education system has failed so many people, past and present, who never gained fluency in SAE. And it suggests a solution that has actually worked to some degree in the limited situations in which it’s been implemented.
I never said I was opposed to it. I basically said, if people value their children’s education they won’t act counterproductively with regards to what the schools are currently doing. Since, it takes a good chunk of time, money, and political will to change the schools and the clock doesn’t stop ticking just because we’d like it to, assist the schools at home. Yes, I know that won’t help everybody. But it would be an improvement.
Education is in some ways not fairly allocated. I think of my children and the advantages they have. It’s ridiculous the differences between what we can provide and what lower income socio-economic groups can. Not just materially but with in-home instruction. Kid gets stuck on AP physics or calculus? Not a problem. I have years of engineering education and can easily help. This contributes to a huge difference in educational outcomes. The reason I mention at home help is that the schools won’t be able to overcome these sort of advantages/privileges without parental or cultural support. And education is an arms race of sorts. Different communities invest different amounts in order to have a relative advantage in education so that their children have a large advantage in the economic competition of adult hood.
This is all fine, and I have no problem with respectfully (meaning no talk of AAVE as “improper English” or similar) advocating parental involvement. But I think society is better off if even kids without parents who have the skills and resources to teach certain things like SAE fluency are given the best chance to succeed at school.
You seem to be ignoring or unaware of the fact that the linked article cites several separate research results spanning several decades and discussions with multiple researchers, not just Dr. Washington’s own “opinion” or even just her own research:
Then it’s strange that you still didn’t happen to notice that what it discusses is not merely “the opinion of one researcher”.
Again, it seems odd that somebody who actually read the article, and more than once at that, would have failed to notice this. I am not iiandyiiii and etc etc., but it seemed pretty apparent to me that this was a reference to one of the sections that I partly quoted above:
That is clearly a description of a stupid methodology (“must correct students whenever they lapse from speaking proper English!”) in which rigidly forcing students to adhere to SAE in all circumstances actually sabotages their effective learning of SAE. I.e., education system failing people who don’t develop SAE fluency.
Maybe I missed it, but did the article discuss at all about how students are identified for special instruction in SAE without also stigmatizing them in some way? Or is that just considered a lesser stigmatization that is unavoidable and better than the alternative?
Do you think that native Spanish speaking kids are allowed to answer questions in the classroom in Spanish? Or do you think they are rigidly forced to adhere to SAE? Does forcing native Spanish speaking kids to adhere to SAE sabotage their effective learning of SAE?
Probably not, probably so, and probably not, but I don’t see what this has to do with AAVE-native kids. Those kids speak English, they’re just not fluent in SAE. The language they’re fluent in is “correct”, so if/when a teacher tells them they’re speaking incorrectly, they might have trouble reconciling this with the fact of everything in the rest of their life which tells them that they’re speaking correctly. And they are, in fact, speaking correctly – they’re just not speaking SAE. That just makes them less likely to want to participate in class, since they know they’ll just be berated for speaking the way that everything and everyone in their lives outside of school indicates is the correct way to speak.
But if, as the article advocates, they are specifically taught that AAVE is a real English dialect, and that SAE is also a dialect with significant differences, and those differences are explained, drilled, and taught, then they can understand the facts of the society they live in, including the facts of multiple dialects of English being useful and necessary in different contexts, rather than the counterfactual biases of some teachers who might just be ignorant of these facts.