Ebonics is not the answer
Ebonics is not the answerBy: kamila
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EBONICS IS NOT THE ANSWER Over the pass few months, a controversial subject regarding the education of African American students in the Oakland School District has made its way to the top of discussions across America. �Ebonics� or African American Vernacular English (AAVE), or Vernacular Black English (VBE) has been erroneously called �slang,� �broken English,� instead the full-fledged dialect that it is. Much heated debate, public and private, has brought an opinion from almost everyone who has heard of the subject. Without there being only one primary reason, evidence shows there are several important reasons such as lowering the English standards, wasting the taxpayers dollars and finally lowering the students� self-esteem and confidence are equally significant in the fight against Ebonics. Oakland Unified School District strongly disagrees with the linguists and the Board of Education opinion of lowering student�s academic standards and proposes its ambitious professional development goal: ensuring that teachers understand the structural details of AAVE so that they can draw on Black students' linguistic proficiency. Attitudes toward the vernacular dialect may well have to be overhauled, and some fairly extensive linguistic training will need to occur. Teachers will need to know how to weave dialect instruction into reading, writing, and oral language development in order to connect it to real communicative functions. Society has a clear vested interest in educating its youth. In his most famous decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in Brown vs. Board of Education "Education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments... In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education." An education that promotes success and esteem, not one that suggests lower standards. Warren's words are no less true today. President Kennedy once said, "A child miseducated is a child lost." Ebonics has fast become a statewide concern because it promises to miseducate an entire generation of children by lowering academic standards, forcing students to underperform. Oakland�s proposal on Ebonics intending to improve performance of black students, who make up more than half of the distinct and whose average grade is a D-plus will not be successful as many studies prove it. Since 1966, linguists at Stanford University have done a number of studies of Ebonics and their researches show that black children who have been thought using the Ebonics program -- which recognizes so-called Black English as distinct from standard English � have not improved their ability to read and write standard English. �These children deserve a first-rate education, not another feel-good trying to help program which failed in 1977 in the trial in Ann Arbor1,� said Jim Boulet, Jr., Executive Director of Standard English Proficiency Program. �The marketplace is demanding excellent communications skills. These children are being denied that opportunity,� Boulet said. Ann Arbor High School is not the only failure in the history of African American Vernacular English. Twenty-six years...
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