A new take on ebonics and teaching

NEA Today, Oct 1998 by Tucker, Michelle

In 1996, the Oakland, California school board created a national furor when it required all district schools to participate in a program that included Ebonics. Georgia State University professor Lisa Delpit, co-editor of The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language and the Education of AfricanAmerican Children, spoke with NEA Today's Michelle Tucker about the story behind the Ebonics furor. What is Ebonics? Ebonics has been defined as a combination of the words "ebony" and "phonics"-in other words, "black sounds."

There are different contextual forms of Black language-fonnal and informal varieties. But in general, Ebonics is the language many African Americans speak, which some linguists link to the language spoken in West Africa

What attracted the Oakland board to Ebonics? Most of the African-American children in Oakland were performing miserably. But one school, the Prescott School, consistently performed near the top of the district.

Its students were all low-income African-American children. And it adopted a program called the Standard English Proficiency, which uses the children's home language and culture to teach them standard English.

The task force examining the performance of African-American children decided to ensure that the program was placed in all the schools. Why did the Ebonics issue explode in Oakland? The media presented it as though Oakland was teaching Ebonics. The implication was that the Oakland board only wanted children to acquire their home language, only wanted to work with them in their own language. This was a total misjudgment of how African Americans typically see schools.

In African-American communities, the school has been a place where children form a bridge between African-American English or language and "standard" or "edited" English.

Also, there were folk who implied that the Oakland educators were trying to separate children from the mainstream. And there were those saying, "Oakland is trying to get more money"-as if some additional funding were not a legitimate goal for solving a problem.

Nowhere did I hear a discussion that focused on what is good for the children. The kids in Oakland never got the benefit of understanding what was successful instructionally at Prescott.

What are the lessons from the Ebonics debate?

Rather than see this language as just something to be fixed, we as a larger society have to understand its beauty. Then we can then acknowledge it as a wonderful language form, while we also teach "edited" English.

If kids want to fit in, if they want to be part of the group, they'll learn the language. But if they feel rejected by it. they'll resist it.

Is that why you support curriculums bridging home language and standard English? Yes. Sharon Nelson-Barber has done research with Pima Indian students and found that their language more approximated standard English until fourth grade. At that point, the students were beginning to understand the negative view that the school held about them.

You make your allegiances with those people you feel are going to support you-not those who are going to be antagonistic to you and your community.

To order The Real Ebonics Debate ($12 plus $3.50 s&h), contact Rethinking Schools at 800/669-4192, Fax 414/964-7220. Send E-mail to RSBusiness@aol.com.