Ebonics A Bridge to Help Black
Ebonics A Bridge to Help BlackI feel that the discussion on Ebonics has gone beyond the original objectives of the program. Ebonics is a bridge to make Afro-American children understand more the English language. Mexican Americans use the code-switching technique to learn the language. A phrase is said in English, and the translation is given in Spanish. This is also how the Chinese and the Japanese learn English. As a quote from an article writes,
The real question is what happened to the good educational philosophy, which states that in order to teach a child you had to start from where the child is. The new Hispanic immigrants understand this and that is why we now have a move going on across this country for BI-lingual education. They demand, and get, teachers who understands Spanish and other Latin American dialects to teach their children English. They know that it does not matter if a child is African American, Chinese, Spanish, or Italian. For a child to learn they know you have to build on what that child knows. Therefore, if the child comes into the room saying 'dis' and 'dat', the teacher instead of frowning needs to know that 'dis' means 'this' and 'dat' means 'that' and responds accordingly not with a frown but with the proper words.1
Those who objects the introduction of English says that the introduction of Ebonics will assist those who do not fully understand standard English or who loses interest because they feel that the language of their community is being ignored. This is not about racism; this is a method of teaching. "What you need to do is teach the child how to move from ebonics to standard English."2 said psychologist Robert Williams. Therefore, teaching ebonics' origins could help children understand the differences from standard English. This is not too far fetched when you think about how millions of people travel to other countries these days with little computers in their hands that helps them translate another language to what they understand. When they want to say hello in French, Chinese, or Spanish they look up the word "hello" and the translation is given to them. Would they have been given the French words first without any hint of what it means?...
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