Ebonics

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist. Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of Education for approving the policy in June. Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students.

Note the subtle switch from "may" to "will be." Evidence? Dr. Texeira thinks so. A couple of her more liberal colleagues think so too.

Ebonics, a dialect of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate language in 1996 by the Oakland school board.

So a school board is qualified to decide what is or is not a separate language? Wow! Those guys are really good out there in Oakland. But maybe they should have deferred to the folks at the Linguistic Society of America, who disagree with them. An article which took a very balanced view of the Oakland decision can be found here. It (and other articles I have seen on this decision) ignore the question of whether Ebonics should be called or language or a dialect, since this is only a matter of semantics anyway. However, it disagrees with almost everything else in the 1996 resolution. Quite an interesting read.

Len Cooper, who is coordinating the pilot program at the two city schools, said San Bernardino district officials do not plan to incorporate Ebonics into the program. "Because Ebonics can have a negative stigma, we're not focusing on that,' Cooper said. "We are affirming and recognizing Ebonics through supplemental reading books (for students).'

Translation: Because Ebonics can have a negative stigma, district officials plan to incorporate Ebonics into the program WHILE CALLING IT SOMETHING ELSE.

"At every step we will see positive results,' [Board member Danny] Tillman said.

Only in education do we make such conclusions BEFORE the results are out. Hey, Danny, why don't we wait until the END of the year and then objectively analyze whether or not the results were positive?

[Texeira] said a child's self confidence is tied to his or her cultural identity.

Huh? It is? Why? Because she says so? What's the basis for such an absurd position?

She compared the low performance of black students to starvation. "How can you be angry when you feed a family of starving children?'

I disagreed with the previously quoted sentence, but I was at least able to discern some actual meaning in it. But here I am at a complete loss. What does this mean? Can anyone tell me what either the tortured metaphor or surreal question means? This is the kind of obtuse thinking that I've come to expect from the edu-left. Sentences like this do not betray an inability to communicate as is often suggested; they betray an inability to think.

[The complete article can be found here. Thanks to DVD for bringing it to my attention.]