Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

124 Language Diversity in the Classroomless and less to ‘do’ for the disadvantaged child in terms of curriculumalteration. Rather, the required changes are more attitudinal in nature,resting upon more accurate psychological, social and linguistic understanding.Just as with oral language, much depends here upon theknowledge and the sensitivity of teachers; and, as with speech, it isassumed that all children can develop standard-dialect reading skills.Given increasing comprehension, there is every indication that childrenwill also have increasing choice on the ‘reproduction’ side of theequation. There is an abundance of models (both printed and spoken)here, ranging from classroom teachers and the books they use, to thewider world beyond the school gates. It is, of course, expected thatchildren will not be left entirely to their own devices: they are in school,after all. Teachers who are, themselves, well-informed can graduallymake clear the contexts in which standard usage is most appropriate andwhere, therefore, its use is likely to be most beneficial. But, as with otherimportant aspects of life, much can be left to the evolving discretion ofthose most directly involved.Some may think that this ‘approach’ is much too laissez-faire, but weshould bear in mind that any more formal or strict approach (even ifstemming from the best of motives) is not likely to work and may, in fact,widen the gap that already too frequently exists between the disadvantagedchild and the school. In this regard, Bullock (1975: 143) made asensible recommendation:The teacher’s aim should be to indicate to his [sic] pupils the value ofawareness and flexibility, so that they can make their own decisionsand modify these as their views alter.A short postscript: beyond possible contributions to skills development,it may be that books written in nonstandard varieties have othervalues. For example, materials produced in the local vernacular ofBallyfermot, a working-class suburb of Dublin, were seen to ‘legitimize’that variety (Murphy, 1975) and books in BEV have, it is argued,reinforced the self-esteem of their readers (Edwards, 1989).Notes1. Miss Fidditch and Mrs Grundy may be candidates for the Freudian couch. Itis now ‘pretty generally recognized by psycho-analysts’, observed Flugel(1934: 205), ‘that anal factors often play a part in our attitude towardslinguistic correctness’. Anal repression may lead to ‘disagreeable feelings’ inboth speaker and listener: the former, guilty of a lapse of linguisticcorrectness; the latter, forced to hear speech ‘murdered’ by clumsiness. ‘The