[PEN-L:10216] Re: [stormingheaven] ebonics?

[Rakesh Bhandari]

There was a disturbing context to the ebonics controversy. The City of
Oakland had guaranteed the Raiders football team millions of dollars if
it returned from Los Angeles. The City had to fork over millions that of 
course threatened the public funding of parks, schools and social
services; at the same time, it treated the teachers' strike harshly. The
ebonics reform was a low cost, highly symbolic action that concentrated
attention on itself at the expense of other more expensive reforms that
were doubtless needed more. For example, the completion of classroom
construction at some of the high schools in East Oakland. Or paying for
better teachers or paying teachers to be better in smaller classrooms
(high school classes easily reach 40 from my observation). Others will
have to speak to this--it is indeed very complicated-- but I remain very
skeptical of the idea of hording black students into classes taught by
teachers whose only speciality may be ebonics bilingualism. Which
is not to deny that teachers who are sensitive to the rules of black
english and who don't treat it as a kind of inherited grammatical
deficit (asphaxia?can't remember the term) would be much more effective in
the classroom. Do note however that black english is often
spoken by all students--chicano, asian and white included.   

Yours, Rakesh