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In Defense of Speaking Proper English in School
September 23, 2010
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I'd like to advocate here something that maybe quite unpopular in some quarters but deserves if nothing else, a little deeper consideration.
And that would be the attempt to engage in so-called standard English as much as possible in our public schools, especially when teaching minorities.
What motivates is not an attempt to regulate student's language use in the large. Indeed I agree with most linguists, I think, when I say that one particular grammar or lexicon is inherently superior to another. Language style ought to be chosen, or shaped, according to social context; to what's appropriate.
The argument for trying to immerse the minority student, and all students really, by expecting the conversational flow to be in standard English is based simply upon considerations of efficiency in learning.
Unless one is unconcerned with the acquisition of the rules, at whatever level, required to produce sentences in standard English, the language arts educator, and administrators, ought to consider seriously the value of requiring the use of standard English in regular classroom discourse, across the curriculum when possible.
The basic argument is this:
1. They have to, ought to, are expected by the state to, learn standard English anyhow. Therefore one should look for the most efficient ways to teach it.
2. Most lecture, pencil, paper, and test regimens, have been found to be not very effective.
Although we may adopt different language styles when we write from how we speak, there's no reason to expect that we generate written sentences from a wholly different set of rules or habits than when we speak.
What compelling proper speech seeks is for greater opportunity for practicing proper generative routines. This embedding in everyday discourse gives purpose to the linguistic endeavor.
3. The likelihood I think is great that many, most, minority students have already acquired the basic rules of standard English grammar. Why? Because humans probably have a built-in facility for grammar and for non-written language skills in general. The basic Chomsky argument for assuming a high degree of grammatical learning. It's probable that due to stigmatization and lack of use by their [sub-]culture, these students simply reflexively refuse, defer, from engaging these rules during spoken language generation.
And undoubtably, lacking use, expressing themselves is made more difficult.
But one needs to bear in mind the issue of efficiency. If standard English is worth doing, then it's worth expecting regular compliance with standard grammar rules, 'cross curriculum; with all the hassle that that entails.
And hassle ought to be expected.
Questions about hegemony and how one compells compliance to language norms.
Hegemony, unavoidable, conceptual,
it is essential that
the student's self-concept be assured, and not be threatened by linguistic disfigurement, and loss of identity.
The reassurance consists, in part, in pointing out that all language skills and usages are learned. And one doesn't unlearn a particular language, or grammar, or style, when learning to use another language, grammar, or style.
All that is required to maintain most linguistic habits and styles is simply occasional practice. Thus it is very doubtful that any student will lose his sense self, pride, ethnic heritage, etc., as a result of the acquisition of broader language skills.
Indeed broadening is the key word. For the other side of the coin is considerations of intellectual growth and greater opportunities for word-play.
The fact, though, is that a form of hegemony is in play.
The teacher ought to be bound to the expansion of the student's intellectual, cultural, and social sense of identity.
The teacher can't help but feel oblige to lift the minority student above the shallowness of popular culture, and raise the consciousness of other times, cultures, and, especially linguistic, art-forms.
The need to defeat, or subdue, or subvert, the greater commercial, popular culture by teachers and the educational establishment in general, seems to me unavoidable. Experiencing new cultural forms would seem inevitably to lead to the reappraisal of accepted cultural forms. Popular song tends to sound smaller, less inventive, after an exposure to other musical styles.
And that's why the language art teacher ought to make limited use of musical recordings and such; in order to give the student a broader view and experience, and to overcome cultural fixations and shallowness.
[thoughts in progress, september 23, '10]
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