That's right -- I caught up!

I know I haven't posted much on the blog -- Lord knows I can't seem to shut up when we chat during our Lit Circle time -- so I made it my goal to get this done and post (hopefully) something good! I thought I was all on my game until I saw that Matt was far more prepared and commented on the same idea I had... but I'll build off it best I can :)

Matt said, "What I found to be so interesting is the emphasis that is placed within the community on Standard English. When the community gathers for a BBQ, Ebonics is heard everywhere; yet, outside of that people are almost expected to speak Standard English. I find this to be a bizarre dynamic." I reacted much the same way. Joyce Hope Scott wrote about "messing up" and "shaming" her family when code-switching to Black English grammar and/or using Black English enunciations when performing in church for the holidays. Language is so engrained in culture, how could you shame your family by speaking true to its roots? Why would it be so bad to use Black English in a place, church, where your personal connection and worship are the most important as opposed to how it is said? Shouldn't a book that is meant to empower Ebonics, its use and those who use it, be promoting it rather than pointing out how so many who use it devalue it at the same time? This is a bizarre dynamic.

But then Scott talks about the private and public face and I realized that she speaks to the very heart of this debate. We all have private and public faces -- we've talked about it together in our circle as well as in the class as a whole. We "code switch" depending on whether we are speaking to our families and friends, or our professors and bosses -- we keep up our public and private faces each and everyday and rarely deviate. We have an idea of what is appropriate and in what context. That is the problem the Oakland School system encountered -- this idea of the public face. Sure, kids can talk to their parents at home however they want so long as when they are in public they speak "proper. " That is the power structure we have so engrained in our society... there is a proper way to do things, a "smart" way to do things and that most certainly includes speaking.

I believe I said at one point that people who need to read this book won't and that because we are, or are studying to be, teachers we already are aware of this. I take back that statement as I am someone who needed to read this book. I did not realize how I viewed language until I caught myself last week before correcting a student on his pronunciation. The way he pronounced the word was not "standard" but I realized as I opened and then immediately snapped shut my mouth that he was not clouding the meaning and I needed to let that go. It was like the example in the book about the teacher forcing the boy to say "brother" rather than "brudda." I further that very power struggle by focusing on the so-called proper, but admit I find it difficult to figure out how I can help to change that power struggle what with all the state standards and testing that I am responsible for helping students succeed on. But I think I have come to look at it through a different light, albeit one that is a bit frustrating at times

I wonder then, if we can criticize someone for "devaluing" Ebonics when the debate is opening doors to examine the public and private faces. It seems to me that just creating the debate, just putting these issues out for the public to see rather than keeping it private is in fact valuing Ebonics and I don't think the power can be leveled or reversed or what have you overnight -- this book is just one step closer to it, I hope.

And now that's a rant :)
--Em

The Real Ebonics Debate: Weeks 3 and 4

Because the last section is so short, I think that we can combine our discussion of the two.

In this reading, I found the selection by Joyce Hope Scott to be discussion worthy. As you may recall, she recounts the language and history of Ocala, Florida...a Bilingual, Bicultural Community within a Segregated Southern America.

What I found to be so interesting is the emphasis that is placed within the community on Standard English. When the community gathers for a BBQ, Ebonics is heard everywhere; yet, outside of that people are almost expected to speak Standard English. I find this to be a bizarre dynamic. What messages have permeated this community. I wonder why the community does not fight for its bilingual nature, why more power is not attributed to the language of Ebonics.

I found this discussion, this debate, to we empowering and certainly interesting, yet, I feel as though excuses are constantly made. The book explains in detail how Ebonics is truly its own language, yet in the documentation of the Ebonics decision, the wording was changed to devalue Ebonics.

I understand that this fight is being taken step by step, and certainly the debate itself is an enormous gain. Yet, I think that it is important to stay true to its power. This is a mild rant, yet I see those fighting on the behalf of Ebonics, allowing themselves to devalue Ebonics and it does not leave a good taste. Maybe you all feel differently, thoughts?

Hawaiian Parallel

hey y'all!

if any of you are interested in seeing a parallel of this ebonics debate in Hawaii -- we speak a language at home, Hawaii Creole English (commonly referred to as Pidgin), that has an uneducated stigma attached to it (just as AAVE does in the wider US) and some educators want to use the language in their classrooms, especially in English literature (the language has historical roots since it was originally a pidgin born from workers from all over the world who worked on the plantations and thus needed to communicate with other workers, native Hawaiians, and white bosses). Anyway, there's a similar debate going on accompanied by similar media coverage...here's the link.

The Real Ebonic Debate: Week 2

I think last week's session brought up an interesting point: who, if anyone, is to blame for the misrepresentation of the Oakland school board's decision to implement Ebonics into the classroom. Is it the media's fault? Or was the media only portraying a deeper issue about race that persists in the U.S?
The Real Ebonics Debate is very insistent that the picture the media painted of using Ebonics in Oakland schools was incredibly skewed and biased. I am curious, though, if the biased opinions of the news would have been so universally accepted if the general public wasn't so ready to agree with what was being said by the media without looking further into the issue. And the end of the section we read, there is an excerpt from the Florida Teacher Certificate Examination which states: "A high rate of failure, particularly for Black students... possibly will result from the test" (131). Perhaps these types of assumptions are what allowed the media's libelous statements to go unchecked by the majority of Americans.

Welcome to the Real Ebonics Debate!

Week 1

"I can be neither for Ebonics or against Ebonics any more than I can be for or against air (or Oxygen as stated by Professor Stevens in class today with respect to technology). It exists. It is the language spoken by many of our African-American children. It is the language they heard as their mothers nursed them and changed their diapers and played peek-a-boo with them. It is the language through which they first encountered love, nurturance, and joy" (Delpit 17).

Allow this blog to serve as a technological book club for the members of the Real Ebonics Debate. As well as a wonderful fishbowl discussion for which the members of ED 447 Literacy and Assessment in the Secondary School can participate through reading.

From what I have noticed thus far in the reading (through page 76), we can break down the Ebonics debate into a few discussions:

1. What was the effectiveness of the Oakland school board's approval of the Ebonics Resolution?

2. What was the effect of the media upon the Ebonics Debate? Clearly not a positive effect, but to what extent? How does this relate to the response from Academia and Leadership, especially Black Academia and Leadership? We see an extremely unlikely response from people such as Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and the liberal community, how so?

3. Is Ebonics a separate language from English? Is it a dialect? Is this even an important discussion to be having? Generally, what is Ebonics for those who are unfamiliar with it and how does it function? What is the aspectual be? The stressed been? Multiple negation? Adjacency/context in possessives? Postvocalic /r/ deletion? Copula absence? Camouflaged and other unique lexical forms?

4. How does whiteness function in this debate?

5. What was the response from educators? What should teachers do?

I hope that these questions and insights can offer us a starting point for the Great Debate! I look forward to your thoughts.

-Matt