Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

142 Language Diversity in the Classroomfor developing language skills and, indeed, it is suggested that their‘receptive and expressive’ talents are not greatly valued anyway. This lastpoint is particularly reminiscent of the linguistically misguided sentimentsof deficit theorists of the 1960s.Teachers are not malicious, they can hardly be said to be unsympatheticto language ‘problems’, and it is probably fair to say that there nowexists greater tolerance for language variation than was once the case.Still, while teachers view language differences as springing from variedhome backgrounds (true), they also often continue to see them asnecessitating some sort of compensatory action (dubious). Severalteachers in this study commented extensively on the ‘poor’ Englishlearned at home, and the consequent need to teach children ‘correct’English. This task, some felt, was analogous to teaching a new languagealtogether. The various programs and activities suggested as useful herewere again echoes of the dreary recommendations of language-deficittheorists: language drills, speech therapy, and so on.Where teachers were in contact with minority-group children, thespeech patterns of these were singled out for attention. Many put blackand Acadian children at the top of the lists of those having languagedifficulties. A fairly general view was expressed by one teacher as follows:‘Blacks have a slang language all their own. They will not use properEnglish when opportunity arises’ (Edwards & McKinnon, 1987: 339). Inthe secondary school having the highest number of black pupils, 11 of the22 teachers commented explicitly on the children’s language problems.Such findings are consistent with those reported elsewhere. In herdiscussion of the educational situation of Puerto Rican children inAmerica, Walsh found teachers whose views seem to have ‘effectivelysummarized all of the conclusions drawn from Bernstein’s theories ofrestricted and elaborated codes’ (Lippi-Green, 1997: 111):These poor kids come to school speaking a hodge podge. They are allmixed up and don’t know any language well. As a result, they can’teven think clearly. That’s why they don’t learn. It’s our job to teachthem language to make up for their deficiency. And, since theirparents don’t really know any language either, why should we wastetime on Spanish? It is ‘‘good’’ English which has to be the focus.(Walsh, 1991: 107)Could we ask for a clearer or more succinct statement of the ‘deficit’position? The very persistence of such views, more than two decadesafter the demonstrations by Labov and his colleagues is noteworthy initself, of course noteworthy and (as Lippi-Green, 1997: 111 observes)