Ebonics

I have to admit, it was difficult for me to not think of Ebonics as “incorrect” English.  I have a degree in English so I spent so much time and effort trying to speak and write in the “correct” standard English way.  I had a bit of an “Aha” moment on the way home this afternoon.  Melissa and I carpool, and we were sitting at a traffic light next to a liquor store.  When traffic started moving, we started to go, but a truck was trying to pull into the liquor store.  The driver started to pull in front of us just as we started to move forward.  Melissa said, “whoa, okay, go on and getcha lickha.”  I don’t know if that would be classified as Ebonics or not, but I realized that we do have ways of talking to our friends and family that we wouldn’t use in class or when writing a paper.  I say “y’all” and “what choo doin” and “nuthin” and many other words and phrases that I wouldn’t say in certain situations.  Thinking back on it, I do tend to slip into my Southern accent more easily when I’m around my family.  This way of speaking works for me and the people that I’m around and it does have a place and a value.  As long as students know when it’s okay to slip in and out of certain ways of speaking there isn’t anything “incorrect” about it.  It’s just the way people talk and interact.  I am questioning why I immediately dismissed Ebonics.  As a Southerner, I drop letters off of words, my words run together, I understand my grandmother when she says things like “over yonder” and “warshin machine.”  Is this way of speaking better than Ebonics?  I think that I saw it that way.  Did I see it that way because I’m white and educated?  I am sitting here trying to come up with an answer, and I don’t have one.  I think I have taken the first step in answering it by beginning to question why I did dismiss it.

New appreciation

After visiting the King Center I think I have a new appreciation for Dr. King. Of course I am familiar with his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and it is easy to, not necessarily overlook, but to not really think about his life of service and sacrifice. He worked so hard to bring people together and to live a life of peace and justice. The one thing that really stood out to me was when Abernathy was giving the speech at Dr. King’s funeral, he said that the American psyche must be in such a terrible place that we would take away one of the best. Dr. King really was one of the best that this country and this world has ever produced, and he was needlessly murdered. I just wonder if he had had the opportunity to live his entire life, what changes would he have been a part of? Would we be in a completely different place now?

Oh, the times they are a changin’

I have been reading a lot by James H. Kunstler. He argues that the decline in oil production will force Americans to live in more localized, agrarian societies. I do believe that the current system can not sustain itself. We have built our society and our lives around the production of cheap oil. We have started to see the effects of this with the rising oil and gas prices, which cause rising food prices because it’s all connected. What does this have to do with education? In his book, The Long Emergency, Kunstler talks about the current education system, in relation to our reliance on cheap oil, and how this will change in the future. Here is a quote about the current education system from The Long Emergency.

“Many of the problems of education today are the unintended consequences of consolidated administration – the attempt by school districts to save money by operating fewer but bigger buildings, running fewer but larger bus fleets, and employing fewer non-teaching managers. This was made possible by a chain of connected circumstances. The suburban development pattern erased the essential quality of locality per se. Typically, by the 1960s, suburban children couldn’t walk anywhere, including to school, so wherever they did go to school a bus was required to get them there. Cheap oil made the school bus fleet a normative part of the system. (Think of a school bus fleet as a public transit system that runs only twice a day for people under eighteen and you may grasp the basic profligacy of the system.) Once that was established, school districts gathered their pupils from ever-larger geographic population ’sheds’ and bused them to ever more gigantic consolidated ‘facilities.’ The economies of scale they strove to enjoy were typical of any larger enterprise during the cheap-oil age. The effect of all this on the students, though, was always secondary to the administrative benefits, and the purpose of school somehow got lost, so that, paradoxically, even the richest suburban high schools with Olympic swimming pools, food courts, and hectares of playing fields produced alienated students dogged by anomie, depression, and a pervasive anxiety about their future roles in a consumer society.”

He goes on to say the this system will not be feasible in the future. There will still be a need for capable teachers, but education will have to be scaled down and done on a more local level in smaller communities.

Here is a wonderful interview with Kunstler. It is a 5 part series and a little lengthy, but I highly recommend it if you would like to learn more about him or his ideas.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hXsCMC0xcOY

My dilemma

I was forwarded a very offensive, racist email today. I received this email from my fiance who received it from his grandfather. Jason sent this to me because he was shocked and disgusted. His grandfather is notorious for forwarding offensive emails, but this one takes the cake.

If you want to see the article, click here. It’s listed as satire, but the ideas that permeate it are vile, satire or not.

Basically, this email told of a “Precedent setting decision” in which a judge ruled that black women no longer have independent naming rights for their children. Because black children have names that are so “ridiculous,” black women now have to have at least 3 white women agree on a name before the black mother can name her child.

Are you appalled yet? His grandfather did send an email afterwards saying that this wasn’t actually true. Wow, thanks for clearing that up! I just got out of an intense 7 hour class about racism and stereotypes, then I get this email. I feel sad and overwhelmed and angry. I also feel helpless. I told Jason that he needs to say something, otherwise his grandfather will continue to send him these awful emails and think that he agrees. What if he doesn’t say anything? Should I send an email to this man that I barely know and tell him how ignorant and horrible he is? Is it my place to enlighten him? I think I am getting to a point where I am tired of being nice and polite about these things. Racism changes who people are, and those changes start with children.

Lost Voices

The history and literature that we are taught as children is centered around white Europeans. For example, history doesn’t even seem to begin in this country until Europeans started it. What about the history of the American Indians? What about their literature, their ideas? Literature doesn’t begin until white men wrote it down. The education system has failed to include the voices of American Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. During my undergraduate studies, I signed up for a class called “American Literature Before 1800.” Honestly, I thought that it would be an easy A. It would be a class on the literature that I had already been taught, and I could probably even recycle a few papers. Little did I know that this class was taught by Dr. Timothy Powell, a professor of Native American studies. We didn’t begin the class by talking about Columbus or Puritans or Salem, we began the class by talking about Native American rock art and how it can be considered literature. Let’s just say that my mind was blown. Finally, a class where we talk about other literature, not just white people’s. I think that the problem with our education system today is that we don’t include those other voices. Even when I learned about slavery or the Trail of Tears, I rarely heard the voice of a slave or a Native American. It was still a white European voice. In order to tell the whole story, we must include everyone. I guess the question becomes, how do we include everyone? Is it enough to tell a story about a slave? Is it enough to read a poem by an American Indian? Can the curriculum include everyone? The system has definitely started to get better about including other voices. At least we have Black History month now. Should March become American Indian month? Is April going to be Asian American month. Is setting aside one month enough to make everyone feel worthwhile and appreciated? What about the other immigrants, the other histories? Maybe that’s why it has always been “sugar coated” and watered down. Trying to include every voice and every history is a huge undertaking; one that hopefully we can get a better handle on as teachers.

Teachers from Mexico

Today, during lunch we got a chance to talk with some teachers from Mexico. They talked about a few things that I thought were really interesting. They said that one difference between elementary schools in Mexico and elementary schools here is that students in Mexico have more freedom to move around. They are not so confined to stand in line or constantly sit in a desk. The two teachers that I talked with found it very limiting that the children must always be in line and be quiet. I think that it is very beneficial to students to be able to move around more and feel more free to just be themselves, to just be kids. It might help with some behavior issues. I know that I start feeling restless if I have to sit and be quiet for long periods of time, but because I’m an adult I can control it better than children. Kids are kids, and they have tons of energy. I wish that I had the energy that kids have. Asking them to always control that energy is not realistic.

Another difference that they noticed is that there is more physical affection in Mexican schools. Teachers are always hugging and touching their students and vice versa. The teachers said that it is a cultural difference because in Mexico people often greet each other with a kiss on the cheek, and people are more affectionate. In schools here there is much more concern with “crossing the line” with students. I think that many up and coming teachers want to be able to feel close to the children, but are afraid of hugging and being affectionate.

Another difference that they talked about was about how students begin preparing early on to go into a certain field. A student does not go to college unless he or she knows what they want to study. They begin thinking about it at an early age. I think that students here are placed in very generalized classes for a very long time. If a student shows an aptitude for a certain subject that aptitude continues to be watered down with other subjects. Perhaps, if a young student seems to do very well in math or science, they could be geared more toward becoming the very best in math or science. Having a general knowledge of many subjects is important, but the generalization continues well into college.

Thoughts from today

The class discussions really got me thinking about the labels we place on ourselves and on others. I wonder when we first started using certain labels as ways to catagorize and explain ourselves and others. I certainly didn’t think about these things when I was a child. In elementary school, my best friend was a black girl named Alana; we were inseparateable. I knew that we were different. Her skin was darker than mine, and she wore her hair differently, but there were no labels to go along with her. No labels pinned on me. She was just my friend, and we loved each other. Well, except for the time when she told me that she wouldn’t be my friend unless I gave her the potato chips from my lunch. That wasn’t cool. But even then, it was an issue between two little girls, not a white girl and a black girl. I’m trying to remember when all that changed. When did I start seeing race and attaching certain meanings to it? I honestly don’t know. It is worth some more thought because now there is no such thing as being “colorblind.” We notice race, just like we notice what someone is wearing. But, I think that I was “colorblind” for a brief moment in time. Maybe not “colorblind” because I knew she was black, but blind to attaching any meaning to it. I guess that’s the beauty of childhood. There is a certain innocence that can never be captured again.

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