Ebonics in Schools
Many black individuals have played their part in America's history. Has the Oakland School gone too far by wanting to teach a black slang language in school. In this paper, you will see the peoples, teachers, and the student's opinion as well as the Senate.
A lot of people are speaking out on the subject, especially actors.
Arsenio Hall replied to reporters “When I heard somebody from Oakland say the word genetic, on TV, I ran into the kitchen so I didn't have to be mad at anybody.” James McDaniel of ABC's NYPD Blue and S. Epatha Merkerson of NBC's
Law and Order described the Oakland School Board's decision on Ebonics as a distinct genetically based language (Shister, p.1). Civil Rights leader Jesse
Jackson defended Oakland's school over a controversial plan to recognize black
English in the classroom (N.A., p.1).
On December 18, 1996 the Oakland School Board approved a policy affirming
Standard American English language development for all students. This policy covers the effectiveness of the strategies that must be utilized to ensure that every child will achieve English language Proficiency (Hawkins, p.1). This policy is based on the work of a broad-based Task-Force, convened six months ago to review the district-wide achievement data and to make recommendations regarding the effective practices that will enhance the opportunity for all students to successfully achieve the standards of all students. The data shows the low levels of the student performance and lack of students in the Advanced
Placement Education Program. These recommendations focus on the unique language stature of the African American Students (Shister, p.2).
One of the programs recommended is the Standard English Proficiency Program, which is a state of California model program. Which promotes English-language development for African-American students. The S.E.P. (Standard English
Proficiency) training enables teachers and administrators to respect and acknowledge the history culture, and language that the African American student brings to school (Cambell, p.2). Recently a “Superliteracy” component was added to ensure the development of high levels of reading, writing, and speaking skills. The policy further requires strengthening pre-school education and parent and community parcipitation in the education process of the District
(Hawkins, p.1).
In the following, t...
... middle of paper ...
...Ebonics reached Capitol Hill January 23, 1996 as a Senate subcommittee took up the provocative question of whether using African American dialect can help black children learn Standard English, and whether it deserves Federal support.
The hearing began on a combative note. Senator Lauch Faircloth denounced
Ebonics as absurd and said that the Oakland school board's decision to have teachers recognize it in classes struck him. But Oakland school officials, joined by Rep. Maxine Waters adamantly defended the Ebonics policy and insisted that it had been misinterpreted as an attempt to lead students away from
Standard English. School officials said they simply want Oakland teachers to devote more time to students who rely on black English and help them better understand the difference between their language patterns and standard English.
Many other schools are trying to teach Ebonics such as San Diego and Los Angeles, who are considering on creating plans to teach it (Shanchez, p.1).
The controversy is still going on in Capitol Hill and has not been resolved yet. The solution may come soon. Or it may be a long time from now. Either way some people will be upset with the final decision.
In Dalton Conley’s memoir “Honky”, written in 2000, Conley talks about his experience of switching schools to a primarily white elementary school. He discusses the major differences between his prior, very diverse school and his new, primarily caucasian school. He focuses on the main topics of race and class, and how they enhanced the differences between these two schools.
Another school in the same district is located “in a former roller-skating rink” with a “lack of windows” an a scarcity of textbooks and counselors. The ratio of children to counselors is 930 to one. For 1,300 children, of which “90 percent [are] black and Hispanic” and “10 percent are Asian, white, or Middle Eastern”, the school only has 26 computers. Another school in the district, its principal relates, “‘was built to hold one thousand students’” but has “‘1,550.’” This school is also shockingly nonwhite where “’29 percent '” of students are “‘black [and] 70 percent [are]
Board of Education of Topeka took place. America 's public schools promised a postwar generation of students, many of whom would graduate and continue on to higher education. schools were segregated though because of the "separate but equal" law. In the film, Latin and African-Americans: Friends or foes, the struggle between Latin and African Americans relationship because of American discrimination is analyzed and one can conclude that the competition between the two, to not be the race that was at the bottom could intensify. Not only were there political conflicts that caused for divided communities there were also issues in education, one common issue involving bilingual education. Education plays a big role in these two films, not only were schools segregated and did colored people have the worst facilities and were treated poorly, but there were conflicts even amongst themselves (Latinos and African Americans). It was not fair to treat these races the same when they were indeed different from each
When talking about a school that is mostly filled with African Americans, it is common to picture it as somewhere that has limited programs due to low funding from the government and located where poverty rate is high. Normally the thought of a brand new facility or more investment in schools is not associated with African American schools. The universal problem of mostly black schools is the fact that there is a lack of funding for the school and it...
Recent studies have been conducted to bring AAVE in schools which will result in higher test scores, however people are disagreeing with the idea because they don't want their children to learn “slags”, but AAVE is not a slang, just like standard English. “African American vernacular English, also known as “black speech” was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who dislike the negative connotation of terms like “ nonstandard negro english” that has been cast in the late 1960s when the first modern large scale linguistic studies of African American speech communities begin”(John R. Rickford,2000). For many years, linguistics have treated AAVE as slang because they didn't want to give African American slaves the right to their own language. This all changed December 1996 when the “Oakland school board recognized AAVE as the primary language of its African American students, and took it into consideration to teach them standard English”(Monaghan 1997).
Imagine seeing 10,000 of your classmates walking out of your school because they wanted a better education - a better way of life. In the 1960s’ Chicano students were being “pushed out”(Esparza) of school or being pushed towards vocational programs. East L.A was home to schools were “one out of every four Chicano’s completed high school”(Esparza). Instructors and the school board alike did not have an interest in helping Chicanos finish school to become someone other than a laborer and was expected of them to keep being a laborer. In “Taking Back the Schools”, Sal Castro a high school counselor claims, “I think the bottom line is the lack of concern of the teachers towards the kids and whether the kids were really getting an education or not...the reality set in that the teachers weren’t really concern for the kids.”(Esparza).
On January 28th 2008, the Toronto District School Board voted to approve the creation of a highly controversial black focused public school. This black focused school is a supposed solution to the high dropout rate among black youth in Toronto, which runs as high as 40 percent. The school, which is one of three recommended across the city, will focus on black culture and history, as opposed to the mainstream education system which is seen to be Eurocentric. Although the goal of the school is to be open to students of all ethnic background, the title sends a divergent message. The use of the words “black” or “Afro-centric” within the title of the schools creates a distinct and obvious separation within society. It creates an ideology that black or African-descended students are incapable of succeeding in mainstream education, therefore specialized schools, such as black focused schools, will help solve the issue. Although it sounds like the “right thing to do”, creating a black focused school will not completely bolster black student’s attitude and achievements in school. Furthermore, the topic of black focused schools in Toronto is a moral panic, which corresponds to a form of voluntary racial segregation and deteriorates Toronto’s image as a “cultural mosaic”. This essay will explore the background of what a moral panic is and why this strategy is used in society. In addition, this essay will examine the correlation between black focused schools and two sociological theories, the social-conflict theory and the structural functionalist theory. Lastly, this essay will convey the many important reasons why black focused schools will turn Toronto into a partitioned city.
On May 17, 1954, in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, the High Court, for the first time in American legal history, challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine previously established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and outlawed racial segregation in public schools. The decision, igniting fierce debates throughout the country, was met with violence and strong defiance in the South. The years after Brown, however, saw the passing of several important Acts: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Today, Americans remember Brown v. Board of Education as a success in African Americans’ struggle for equal rights, a change of sea tide for the civil rights movement. While Brown deserves its place in American History Books, its direct product – desegregation – is not the ultimate solution to the education for African Americans. Desegregation only amends the system of education. America has to reassess the word “education,” for black Americans and other minority groups to achieve a real equal education.
The 1960’s were an era in the United States where new ideas were developing, and most specifically ideas pertaining to the civil rights movement and its expansion. Protests, parades, and riots were occurring in an attempt to spread freedom for all people, and as some of these events became relevant in the news, the tensions of the country rose. Violence was occurring in many parts of the countries due to the ideas of those who were not receiving the freedom that they believed were entitled to them. African-Americans found themselves lacking rights in a world where they were just the same as everyone else minus their skin color. One specific city that was affected by these ideas was Rochester, NY. Rochester is a city with rich history, and has been noted to be one of the first cities that “boomed” as it was created. However, the summer of 1964 presented a new problem. A hot summer and racial tensions began a three day riot in which the city was changed. The riots had a lot of effects on the city, by affecting the businesses, the people surrounding, and the views people had on one another. One area that was specifically affected negatively was the area schools in the city. They were already bad to begin with, with less than average grades, bad dropout rates, and lower budgets than non-city schools. They were constantly set at a lower standard, and the riots certainly did not help that issue. The riots caused an un-noted split between the city and outside of the city due to the negative opinions that came from the riots occurring. Due to the race riots that occurred in Rochester in the summer of ’64, there has become an even more considerable split in education between inner and out-of-city schools, causing the downgrade and ster...
Current public high school curriculum are simply too easy. Students are able to take too many easy classes that do not challenge them. This is the first point that needs to be focused on when trying to fix this problem. Within this one cause, there are many different solutions. However, I do not have the time here to name them all. I am going to focus on one particular recommendation that I believe would help the most.
This event was impacted by the Brown vs. Education case. The town of Little Rock Arkansas was one of the most clean, pretty, and quiet cities of the United States in the late fifties. All citizens that had lived there took an abundant amount of pride in their town for its aesthetic atmosphere and peaceful cleanliness. Previous to the events that changed the lives of nine students, as well as, the race relations in America; Little Rock was a town where there was very little tension. “Negroes and whites, for many years had lived si...
For decades now, there have been educational problems in the inner city schools in the United States. The schools inability to teach some students relates to the poor conditions in the public schools. Some of the conditions are the lack of funds that give students with the proper supplies, inexperienced teachers, inadequate resources, low testing scores and the crime-infested neighborhoods. These conditions have been an issue for centuries, but there is nothing being done about it. Yet, state and local governments focus on other priorities, including schools with better academics. It is fair to say that some schools need more attention than other does. However, when schools have no academic problems then the attention should be focused elsewhere, particularly in the inner city schools.
When segregation in schools was abolished in the 1950’s, the African American community surely did not anticipate any outcome that wasn’t positive. This is not to say that American schools should remain segregated, however, the sudden shift in the societal structure caused an imbalance in, what was intended to be, an equal opportunity classroom.
How has hip-hop culture re-appropriated the N-word? How has ‘Black Stylized English’ revolutionized popular culture? How has hip-hop culture transcended ethnic margins? In what ways does hip-hop been identified as influential sites in African students’ processes of becoming black? What are the pedagogical ideas that hip-hop has linked to its culture? Was hip-hop part responsible for the youth’s involvement in Barack Obama’s presidential election? Did hip-hop make politics more interesting for the youth? How has hip-hop culture influenced the youth’s perspective on race and