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The public schools are these kids' last and only hope to learn the communications skills (aka standard English) they will need to make it to the middle class. D

• gecko 14y ago
  That's not what he's suggesting. Rather, he's suggesting that the schools separate teaching how to communicate amongst themselves v. how to communicate in a middle-class manner, and not label the former "wrong" and the latter "right," but rather the former "personal" and the latter "formal." That's not different from students of yore having to learn Latin to get along in college: it wasn't that they were speaking English (or French, or German, or whatever) poorly, but rather that Latin was required to get ahead in the world. Same thing here.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• blocking_io 14y ago
  You should really read articles before commenting on them. She says that these kids are speaking AAVE because that’s what they know; it’s not wrong — it’s their language. She thus advocates teaching students who speak AAVE at home the concept of code-switching. The general idea is simply the notion of switching between two different languages as needed. No one is advocating that students aren't taught formal English, but that the language they speak is properly recognised. Doing this will actually improve students' ability to learn formal English.