Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

The Language Debate 109of the child a proposal based upon a direct imputation of lower-classfamily inadequacy. Even at the time, there were those who protested:Do we have the right to impose middle-class standards on lowerclassand black families?... Are we confident that the middle-classvalue system, including the current school system, is an appropriatestandard of health? If middle-class behavior patterns are to providethe outcome criteria, is it not necessary to seek and explore shortcomingsin these patterns? (Sroufe, 1970: 143)Such cautionary observations, unfortunately, were typically only halfheard. The more extreme suggestions of deficit-theory interventionists(schemes for wholesale ‘resocialization’ of children, for instance) were byand large resisted although, it has to be said, their plans were oftenrejected on economic and not philosophical grounds but calls forsustained attention to middle-class lifestyles were rarely heeded. Assumptionsof the correctness or appropriateness of such lifestyles run verydeep indeed. (I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that bourgeois lifestyleshave not regularly commanded attention. History reveals little nuance,however where social analysis has not inordinately praised the middleclass, it has called for its obliteration.)As I have implied, the argument against compensatory education andlanguage deficit is not quite complete. It is true that undercutting thedeficit position necessarily means bolstering the opposing point of view,but it is reasonable to supplement this sort of ‘negative’ support withmore direct and more positive evidence for the accuracy of the‘difference’ argument. Therefore, we should now consider some furtherlanguage details.Different LanguageIntroductory observationsWhile the ‘strong’ form of the famous Whorfian hypothesis thatlanguage determines thought is generally rejected, no one denies theinfluence of language upon our habitual ways of considering the world(nor, of course, that the environment has some formative influence uponlanguage development). Where languages come to be suited to theimmediate needs of their speakers, one implication is that all validconsiderations of language usage must also be sensitive to culturalvariation; another is that assessments of languages in terms of ‘better’ or‘worse’ are untenable. No informed opinion could hold that French is‘better’ than English, or that English is ‘worse’ than German, and the