And Soon They Will Be Our Children

"Thus, if teachers hope to avoid negatively stereotyping the language patterns of their students, it is important that they be encouraged to interact with, and willingly learn from, knowledgeable members of their students' cultural groups." Delpit, page 56.

I love language, I love words and I love idiomatic or colloquial expressions. I love dialects and the creative use of words. And in no better manner that I learned my own "Standard English" than through the study of foreign languages. Studying ancient Greek helped me to better understand the use and form of human language in general, and it also showed me that language is a cultural construct and can show a great deal about a culture through that language's rules and standards and its deviations. That said, I tend to pick up a dialect quickly and enthusiastically, and I noticed that I had that same habit when I was around kids. I didn't even think about it or notice it right away, but in hindsight, I worried that I wasn't being "teacher-ly" enough. Reading Delpit's aforementioned quote, I breathed a sigh of relief. Seems that my "bad habit" may have been good instinct. Maybe my way of adopting some of the words or speech patterns of some of the kids I was working with (and for most of my time as a tutor/teacher/volunteer, those kids have been of the underserved poor minority ilk or any combination thereof) was actually an unconscious need I had to try to connect with the kids, and what better way to connect to someone than through that person's language.

Delpit poses a strong argument for taking a long look at how we crackers tend to think that a grad school education taught to us by mostly white professors makes us experts on the best practices of teaching everyone. It's a common mistake and a rather human mistake, but then again perhaps that is just my interpretation of a Western notion that everyone makes the same mistakes as us European-derived control freaks. That may just be a way to assuage our inadequacy in not learning from those mistakes. I find it telling that Delpit feels the need to defend herself throughout her essays, a way of fending off liberal progressive backlash for suggesting that actual skills be taught in school to those students who may lack them. Seems to me that she has a long history of having to battle white liberals that think they know best for silenced minority groups because they read the research.

As I said earlier, I have experience working with poor and minority students. This past year, I tutored homeless youth through the YWCA. At the time, I thought it was sad how many worksheets and drills these kids had a part of their homework. I now see that perhaps the teacher wasn't lazy and unimaginative; maybe she knew something I didn't. Most of the kids in the program didn't have books at home nor did they have parents who spoke English, much less parents who could help out with said homework. Do these kids deserve the disservice of a system that is keen on "pretending that gatekeeping points don't exist" and "ensur[ing] that many students will not pass through them"? [Delpit 39]

No, instead like Delpit advises, I am a big believer in teaching the "rules" to my students so that one day they won't say something like "if only I had known about that". Will I expect them to speak correct and perfect English in class? I don't even speak correct and perfect English. Will I drill them on pronunciation and spelling? No, because I don't think that testing or constant correction works, and I witnessed how bored my tut-ees became with their worksheets. But there is a time and place for the rules, and I want to see that every student is armed with all the tools they will need to make it in this world, but at the same time understand that things like grammatical rules are meant to be broken from time to time (maybe an introduction to e.e.cummings would be appropos, but then even the venerable Shakespear played around with the Queen's English). Maybe I am not a good progressive, because like Delpit, I think that everyone should be questioned, not just those that are my antithesis. I once argued against the idea of an "absolute" and I still believe that there is no one way to teach a subject or an individual child. Language evolves, as do we, so why not teach that to children.

If anyone out there is a Futurama fan, you may be aware that in the year 3000, "aks" replaces "asks" in Standard English. Take that, whitey!