Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Black English as Ebonics 173In the late 1970s, parents of more than a dozen black children at theMartin Luther King primary school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, alleged thatthe school was not properly educating their children. They were doingpoorly at school and the parents’ view was that teachers were unaware ofthe important sociocultural differences between these children and theirwhite counterparts (80% of the school population), and that languagebarriers prevented school success. Indeed, the children had been(inaccurately, needless to say) labelled as educationally retarded andlearning disabled, were relegated to speech classes for languagedeficiency, and were suspended, disciplined and held back. In July1979, after a month-long trial in which several prominent linguiststestified (none for the defendants), a federal court judge ruled that schoolauthorities had failed to act to overcome language barriers, and orderedthem to devise curricula to help the children (particularly with theirreading development). That is, the schools were to adapt.Contrary to some reports, the school was not required to teach BEV,nor were teachers required to learn it so as to communicate with theirpupils they already communicated well enough, and the essentialproblem was with the teaching of reading. (Work by McDermott andGospodinoff [1981] and Lucas and Borders [1987] has since confirmedthat dialect variation per se rarely leads to difficulties with classroomcommunication.) Of great interest, then and of great significance for thepresent discussion was the finding that BEV itself was not a point ofinterference. Rather, the barriers arose here because of the negativereactions to the dialect, coupled with inaccurate teacher expectations and(to put it bluntly) racist perceptions. The linguistic evidence in the caseenabled the judge to find that BEV was a valid and distinct Englishdialect; at the same time, he supported the view that standard English(some form of standard American English, perhaps) was a necessarycomponent of success in school and beyond. Indeed, the judge went sofar as to say that BEV was not an acceptable method of communication inmany contexts.Naturally, the case received very wide publicity, and much of the presscoverage was misinformed and distorted (see Venezky, 1981). As well,general opinion was divided on many aspects. Consequently, a symposiumwas planned to discuss the elements and implications of the Kingdecision; this took place in February 1980. The conference itself became amedia event with, among others, a BBC film crew and a team from theAmerican National Public Radio organization in attendance. A book ofproceedings soon appeared (Smitherman, 1981a), and this presents the