For bitching about language pedantry, other posters' language, and language in general

[iiandyiiii]

@wolfpup

My rebuttal to this is that the real issue isn’t whether this is true or not (sometimes it isn’t) but that it completely misses the point. The major determiner of literacy is not the colour of someone’s skin or how much money they have in the bank; the major determiner of literacy is education. Which is an entirely different matter. If access to education is correlated with being white, wealthy, or some other “privilege”, then you’ve got a much deeper socioeconomic problem than literacy. Which is indeed the case in some places. This is why I’m happy to be living in a country that places a high value on universal access to education and on equity within the education system.

A few years ago I started a thread on pretty much this exact topic:

"Ebonics"/African American Vernacular English and education

Inspired by this article: Many black kids in America grow up speaking African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as their native language. As children, many develop fluency early on in standard American English, but some do not, which can be a very significant barrier to learning, in the same way that immigrant non-English speaking children often struggle. To summarize the article, a researcher believes that helping kids switch seamlessly between the two dialects is a key to ensuring black …

To sum up, a researcher found that an education system that ignores the existence of different dialects of English, and just calls out students for supposedly using “incorrect” English (rather than speaking their native dialect correctly), is harmful to students’ education and results in worse outcomes both for understanding English and other subjects (for those students whose native dialect is African American vernacular English).

On the other hand, education systems that recognize the existence of different dialects of English, and specifically teach recognition and understanding of these kinds of dialects can assist these students and improve outcomes both in English and other subjects.

The key is recognizing the existence of these dialects, and deliberately avoiding any sort of shame or criticism for their usage.

EDIT: Looking back at that thread, @wolfpup participated and ISTM that he was much more thoughtful on that issue than in this thread.