Art Un ticle I.1 ited Sta In the ates News - Woodring College of ...

American people, and upwards of 50 percent of its school aged population. By the year 2050, theaverage U.S. resident will trace his or her descent to Africa, Asia, the Hispanic world, the PacificIslands, the Middle East almost anywhere but white Europe.As diversity increases in our nation's schools, teachers, administrators and other educationpersonnel will be challenged increasingly to become more knowledgeable about the assumptions,attributes, and norms of a range of cultures. These challenges will occur in every dimension ofschool life from the curriculum to the communication that occurs in classrooms. As a result, theissue of cultural diversity will, by necessity, have to be taken into account if effective educationis to be a reality in our nation's schools.The Neglect of Cross Cultural Communication Issues in SchoolsThe failure of many schools to take cross cultural communication issues into account cancontribute to school related problems experienced by specific groups of children. The currentcrisis of African American males in many of the nation's schools demonstrates this point.According to recent statistics, the percentage of African American males who graduate from highschool has decreased since the mid 1970's. A similar trend exists for the percentage that go on tocollege. In 1989, 34 percent of young African American males attended less than four years ofhigh school and only 11 percent attended four years of college or more. In 1990, one out of four(23%) African American males ages 20 29 were in the criminal system, while only 6% of whitemales and 10% of Hispanic males were in the system. Within many schools, it is a welldocumented fact that African American males are disproportionately placed in special educationand speech language pathology programs, and are more likely to be recipients of disciplinaryactions. Recent research has shown that language and communication norms among AfricanAmerican males, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status, are related, at least in part, tothese problems. For example, lower SES African American males are likely to see the speakingof ethnically based English vernaculars, and the use of urban argots, to be markers of masculinityand defiance of white standards. While adherence to ethnic vernaculars allows validation to beachieved within the African American male peerage, their employment within the school settingvirtually guarantees academic problems and, sometimes, social problems. When students'communication norms conflict with the school's communication norms, erosion of academicperformance and acceptable classroom behavior frequently follows. Thus, while the use of Blackvernacular speech by African American males may be perceived as "fresh" by peers, it is viewedby teachers, all too often and incorrectly, as indicators of a slow learning, violent, undisciplined,and obnoxious individual. In order to address these issues, schools must build into their curricula(particularly in the language arts area) the notion that there is a time and place for all language.In this way, respect can be given to students' culturally based vernaculars when used in informal,nonacademic activities, while teaching them the necessity and validity of the school's languagein formal academic settings. Indeed, the creative teacher uses the vernacular linguistic system forcontrastive analysis during the process of teaching standard English. This approach encouragesthe African American male to adapt a bidialectal approach to language use. Techniques forimplementing these approaches to instruction are discussed elsewhere in this booklet. Inaddition, the school must provide examples of strong male images that are able to alternatelyspeak the school's language or the vernacular language, as necessary. Jesse Jackson, Spike Leeand Arsenio Hall represent good examples of highly successful and popular African American© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved54