An initiative in San Bernardino County aims to bring Ebonics into the classroom. The pilot program will teach second, fourth and seventh grade students about black history and culture.
Mary Texeira, sociology professor at Cal State in San Bernardino, commended the school board for approving the policy.
Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students. Ebonics, a dialect of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate language in 1996 by the Oakland school board.
“Ebonics is a different language, it’s not slang as many believe,” Texeira said. “For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language.”
Teresa Parra, board vice president, said she worried the new program would have an adverse effect.
“I’m afraid that now that we have this the Hispanic community, our largest population, will say, ‘We want something for us.’ Next we’ll have the Asian community and the Jewish community (asking for their own programs). When will it end?” — San Bernardino County Sun
On this one, I think I’ll let you decide who’s stupid.
you know i really think you should stick it some where you can kiss my red white and blue @$$
I think Ebonics in the classroom is a bad idea. Ebonics itself is a worthy topic of study, but may be best studied in a forum of higher education, not in the public schools.
its ok to voice your opinion, but unacceptable when its voiced in an ignorant way. there were many different ways to state these same feeling without speaking so unsound.
The point you all fail to acknowledge is that Black Students struggle learning reading and writing in Standard English because no one speaks it in their homes or communities. It’s similar to taking a intro level Spanish class and then being dumped into conversational Spanish. Perhaps you could follow somewhat, but most of it would be unfamiliar. Then, imagine if no one corrected your mistakes; you would continue making the same ones over and over again. In 1989 Hanni Taylor performed a study where she split a class of African American students in half. In one half, she taught English the way you would teach middle-class, standard English speakers. The other half, she corrected all the mistakes that were made and explained how in ebonics something can be said one way and in Standard English another. She would take the time to go through the grammatical differences. When her study was done 11 weeks later. The first group had an 8.5% INCREASE of ebonics in their writing (by teaching them only Standard English as it has been in this country since the dawn of public education) while the second group, the group taught contrastive analysis through ebonics, had a 59% DECREASE of ebonics in their writing.
The idea of teaching ebonics is not to teach it as a second language or as an appropriate substitute, as many Americans fear. Rather, it’s to give students training in a familiar dialect and to later gradually introduce them to Standard English so they can tell the difference. The same thing happened with immigrants in the 1800s, when most of the U.S. ancestory came to this nation. They gradually “assimilated”. It’s been a long time coming, but these methods should be used in public schools, not to make Ebonics a second language, but to guide students to better excel in an educationally-centric nation
This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. I do agree with Jason though, the topic would be best studied in a college sociology course.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. I have a friend who was raised in Inglewood and he spoke perfect eloquent English. His brother spoke ebonics. His brother told him only gays spoke in correct English. It’s not like Blacks aren’t exposed to proper English. They’re allowed to read books, they go to school like the rest of us, they watch the same television shows and movies that we do. If they chose to speak correctly they could. But instead they think they’re too cool. They think the white man is keeping them down when they are keeping themselves down.
agreed with malia you are put threw no more of a struggle than any one else living from your same house hold income or lack there of than anyone else with the exact same means white black fucking purple idc its leaders who make a change not followers and beggars
I just wanted to say that some people are put through more of a struggle than others, especially minorites. A minority could be in the same situation and someone of the majority and have more struggle than the other. Believe it or not, race is still a big problem in this world. Also, for later preference, we don’t like to be compared to “fucking purple”. The race may be called “Black” but it doesnt mean we like to be compared to colors of the rainbow. I’m sure you don’t either. I don’t want to be that person, but your grammar and spelling was driving me crazy so I had to comment. Also, I’m 18 years old and half black and I can type in proper English.
question? is do dat ebonics? instead of do that?
no, “do dat” is not complete enough to be ebonics. it’s just short hand spelling. if you were to say “why you do that?” instead of “why did you do that?” then it would be considered ebonics.
““why you do that?” instead of “why did you do that?” then it would be considered ebonics.”
Wrong Ebonics would be “Why doze you did dat”, or Example, Standard English for “I made love to her all night”, Ebonics “I bee slapin widt my ho all las nite”.
They’re trying to make stupid people look less stupid by saying they are speaking a language. When I was a kid in KY ignorant people would say “how fer is it to the store?” My mother would say “if i ever hear you use “fer” I’ll wear you out, do you get that?” So what you have is stupid parents letting their children be just a stupid, NOW GO LOOK FOR A JOB WITH YOUR EBONICS. It’s not a language it’s stupidity on display with the approval of other blacks to make it seem less stupid.
Afro-American children speak ebonics which is an English Dialect. We should respect their uniqueness instead of trying to teach them that their use of English is wrong. We should try to teach them using ebonics when possible.
Ebonics is not only spoken by blacks. Many whites down south speak the very same Ebonics. People learn language through social interactions, not through the media and reading books. The environment in which someone is in greatly influences the language that they use. I agree with Brain’s comments. I also believe that children should learn how to code-switch.
I was born in 1946 in South St Louis. It was right after WWII and S. St Louis was pretty much German/Irish and many of the Germans were first generation Americans. Many German born and American-First Born spoke with German Accents and spoke German in the Home. It was common to be on a Bus, in a Store, in the Neighborhood and hear German being spoken.
Some of these German kids were still speaking with an Accent in the ’60′s in High School. With One Very Important difference. Their Parents understood that it was imperitive that their children learn and speak Proper English to succeed. Most still spoke German but also came to speak impeccable English. I stay in touch with many of these children of WWII. Almost ALL are very successful and speak Proper English. Oddly enough, we went to school with many other Eastern European kids (Serbian, Croation, Hungarian, etc.) that also experienced the same.
There isn’t a Good Excuse for Black Children to speak Ebonics. Failure is laziness. And speaking Ebonics at Home would be an easier transition to Standard English that German, Spanish, Japanese, etc. Time to STOP making excuses.
Teaching Ebonics in the classroom is as ignorant and stupid as teaching Spanglish to Spanish speakers. This Article truly belongs in this website.
You really think kids should be taught improper English? That’s ignorant within itself. Schools are a place for education and bettering ones self. A class that teaches children to talk in the worst way possible is just plain stupid. learning “ebonics” won’t help you get a job. The only thing it will do is help you look completely and utterly ignorant like anyone who speaks that way.
I completely agree with Brian, and I don’t think the goal is to TEACH ebonics, but rather to use it as a foundation to guide ebonics speakers toward speaking “standard” English, which in my opinion is hardly standard. The English language is one of the most complex languages to teach people. It has and will continue to evolve just as long as people utilize it; the wide-spread use of ebonics is evidence of this evolution. In regards to Rick’s comment, which is first on the list, if people were not so close minded, perhaps the issue of ebonics as its own language would never have been an issue in the first place.
“The English language is one of the most complex languages to teach people.”
You got to be kidding, when a child grows up in a home they aren’t studying a foreign language it is the words they hear mom and dad speak then repeat them back. No studying to it, blacks have no EXCUSE, they have been two hundred years and still don’t know English, GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK. Blacks need to grownup, but people like SOME HERE are not their friends, because they make liberal minded excuses for stupidity thus holding them back. My mother would have beat me to death if I had spoke Ebonics. I’m not a smart person by any means and grew-up around ignorant talk like ebonics but my mother would NOT allow it in our HOME, God bless HER memory.
Blacks claim that racial discrimination is wrong. Yet, some blacks also claim that they are exempt from the obligation to speak correct English, on account of their skin color, whereas most of them seem to grasp the concept that there’s nothing particularly wrong with expecting white folks to speak and write in accordance with widely accepted grammatical standards in this country if they expect to get ahead (particularly in relation to standardized tests for college admissions).
In other words, such people advocate a double standard, which is just another way of saying that they advocate a form of racial discrimination. Ironically, when they insist on speaking “da’ way dey do in da’ hood” (as if the “th” sound is just too hard to make for black folks) and when they suffer the predictable consequences because speaking that way makes them sound stupid and uneducated to many potential employers, they then claim that they have suffered from racial discrimination, when the reality is that it is racially discriminatory to hold black folks to a different behavioral standard on account of their skin pigmentation. A similar phenomenon can be seen with regard to the constant use of certain types of profanity, such as the socially offensive word which refers to a person who commits maternal incest, and also to the “n word”, which one is apparently allowed to say if one is black, judging by the behavior of a lot of inner city black folks.
Thanks to the “one drop rule,” mixed race people such as Lena Horne and Halle Berry have often identified themselves as “black,” even though they sometimes have such light skin that they can easily pass as white. How are such people supposed to decide whether or not they’re allowed to use “ebonics”? What’s the rule of thumb? If you take an opinion poll and the majority says that one subjectively looks black or at least “black enough,” then ebonics is O.K. or even expected? Talk about arbitrary!
I grew up in the Ozarks. Some of the people there spoke in a grammatically proper manner (as did I, thanks in part to the good influence of my maternal grandmother, who was an English teacher). Others (some of whom might have been described as “hillbillies”) did not. But we didn’t call it “hillbonics” or anything of the sort. We called it improper grammar, because that’s what it was. It is a disservice to children to teach them that ebonics is acceptable, because whether one likes it or not, the decision makers in this country do judge by first impressions. Speaking ebonics suggests that a person never paid close attention in the classroom, if he or she even went to class at all.
I guarantee you that Barack Obama never would have been elected President if he’d spoken the way that a lot of the blacks in Chicago speak. Perhaps if he’d just wanted to be elected alderman in a predominantly black ward, folks there wouldn’t have cared (unless he’d been a Republican, in which case he could just about kiss his chances of election goodbye, since there’s only one Republican alderman in the entire city of Chicago, according to a recent article in the Reader). But why kill one’s chances of further political advancement in the larger world? How exactly is that a form of empowerment?
This is so stupid. Why does it matter that some people speak differently? If people are having such a problem, Why don’t you teach them the correct way? Instead of making them feel wrong? I am a African American. And i do not speak that way. But nor do i discriminate against people who do, or do not. This is was Martin Luther King Jr. was against. People say we are all equal. But now this? Now we have to speak ebonics? And the government is trying to say African Americans can not vote? What is this all about? Are we really one union? Or are we going backwards again?
As a Negro male I think it is offensive that people of my race can sound so stupid. Before you start in on my use of Negro there are only three distinct races Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. No such thing as African American, and how do blacks know they all came from Africa? I am an Negro American and have never been nor have I wanted to live and associate with Africa. Look at much of Africa and their culture today it hasn’t changed in thousands of years. I didn’t grow-up as an African but as a black man in Louisville KY, born in 1950, to American parents, as were my grandparents.
I think it makes a person sound uneducated if they speak Ebonics, slang, “REV-Redneck Lingo”. What happened to all the English classes which taught us to speak properly? I don’t care what a persons color of skin may be. If there is an attorney who spoke slang of any type I would not take him serious and avoid him/her at all cost. I correct my children all the time because we live in a town where we have Ebonics and Country Slang. I want my children to be able to say Wash not Worsh! Ick so sloppy!