Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

222 Language Diversity in the ClassroomAnother black parent and educator made the related comment that‘Black parents don’t want black studies or multicultural education fortheir children that is for white children; black pupils need to be good atscience, history, geography at what society thinks of as things of worth’(Woodford, 1982). Even earlier, Coard (1971) had written about theinsensitive and inappropriate educational practices that caused WestIndian children in the UK to become ‘educationally subnormal’; now, are-publication of his work, together with a number of commentaries(Richardson, 2005), argues that schools continue to fail black children. 3The apprehensions here remain both potent and plausible, and wehave seen specifically linguistic manifestations of them in the debatessurrounding Ebonics. But, just as children can be bidialectal, havingaccess to both nonstandard and more standard forms, so black children all children can and should be assisted to develop multiculturalsensitivities that supplement more traditional educational offerings. But,to repeat, any promotion of such sensitivities must be an inextricable partof the whole educational enterprise. If it does not, it will be viewed as apossibly diverting but largely insubstantial adjunct to more obviousclassroom concerns. Not only will this mean a failure to engage those‘mainstream’ pupils who arguably stand in greatest need of enhancedcross-cultural awareness, it could also be interpreted as a lack ofmeaningful concern by those ‘others’ whose very presence reminds usof what a fully formed education ought to involve.Although there is quite a large literature on multicultural education,most of it is quite unsatisfying, for a number of reasons (Banks & Banks,1995, and Gay, 1994, can be recommended, however). First, some of theliterature makes only brief remarks about the value of tolerance anddiversity in the classroom, and then immediately focuses upon purelylanguage issues (see Edwards, 1985). This is both distressing andunderstandable. It is distressing, because if multicultural educationlargely concerns itself with responses to language diversity, then it atonce becomes a narrower (although certainly not worthless) undertaking,one that significantly overlaps with themes and approaches we havealready touched upon here: in short, it loses any claim to independentexistence. It is understandable because, compared with the intangibleand unrealistic nature of much of the relevant literature, an emphasisupon language at least provides something solid to focus upon. Second,and particularly marked in the American context, much of the literaturedevotes itself to specific constituencies and issues: afrocentric educationfor black children, for instance, or programs designed for children ofHispanic background. This second tendency actually turns the idea of