Should Ebonics be taught in schools?

.   Mon Feb 22, 2010 2:10 am GMT
I found this question as an example of a "sensitive topic" on Tom's new project website AskAntimoon, and it really got me thinking... What do you think? Should ebonics be taught in school or not? Maybe they should have a college major that covers it?
Wintereis   Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:43 am GMT
To some extent it can be covered in a course or two and is. It is not enough of a foreign language or even an established part of a language to merit its own full field of study. Besides which, there is no indication that it has staying power. It could go the course of jive. Basically, it is little more than a particular set of slang words. Such things exist in other nations and among other groups. And none of these have been taken into a formal field of study. Why should it?
Summereis   Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:53 am GMT
To some extent it can't be covered in a course or two and isn't. It is enough of a foreign language or even an established part of a language to merit its own full field of study. Besides which, there is indication that it has staying power. It couldn't go the course of jive. Basically, it is much more than a particular set of slang words. Such things exist in other nations and among other groups. And many of these have been taken into a formal field of study. Why shouldn't it?
Springreis   Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:10 am GMT
To some extent it can't be covered in a course or two and isn't. It is enough of a foreign language or even an established part of a language to merit its own full field of study. Besides which, there is indication that it has staying power. It couldn't go the course of jive. Basically, it is much more than a particular set of slang words. Such things exist in other nations and among other groups. And many of these have been taken into a formal field of study. Why shouldn't it?
@.   Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:14 am GMT
<Should ebonics be taught in school or not? Maybe they should have a college major that covers it? >

Linguistics is a branch of biology; it also requires a good knowledge of statistics and the history of English or some other language(s).

If your student has already studied English, biology, and mathematics to an intermediate or advanced level, Ebonics may be a suitable subject of study.
Invité d'honneur   Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:23 pm GMT
Interestingly, some studies on bilingual schools suggested that children whose native language is different from their national language and who got their school education in their native language in addition to the national language got higher grades and mastered the national language faster than those who got their school education in the national language only. Also, children taught bilingually proved to be more confident and to have better IQ test results.

Thus, perhaps children speaking Ebonics natively should get an English-Ebonics bilingual education. Though the relevance of the experiment would rely heavily on whether Ebonics is different enough from English to hinder the acquisition of the latter and whether the fact that Ebonics isn't a teaching-medium language actually lowers the self-esteem of the children who speak it. But even in the negative, it would still be interesting to try and see if better school results are observed in Ebonics-speaking children taught bilingually. Maybe some experiments were already made in this regard somewhere in America?
Invité d'honneur   Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:33 pm GMT
<Basically, it is little more than a particular set of slang words.>

With this comment from Wintereis, I have just realized that maybe "Ebonics" and "AAVE" refer to two separate things. If so, then my previous comment is off-topic, as I was really talking about AAVE.
sayitasitis   Fri Feb 26, 2010 8:14 pm GMT
Maybe the study of Ebonics is something that should be left to Zoologists.
Uriel   Sat Feb 27, 2010 7:51 pm GMT
It's not a different language, it's just a dialect. And it's not like children who speak it haven't also been exposed to the standard dialect all their lives through TV and movies and standard speakers in their own communities. So I have a hard time believing that it would make a lot of difference in their educational experience. Now, if you want to teach it as a linguistic exercise, that's fine. But most people are accustomed to learning different ways to speak in different situations without any intercession on the part of professionals. Regardless of our natural dialect, we learn slang from our friends, corporate speak at work, etc. Each has its own rules and applications, and we pick them up just fine on our own.
Mike Kirby   Sat Feb 27, 2010 8:24 pm GMT
The idea behind classifying certain students as speaking "Ebonics" as their primary language was not to suggest that it should be taught as such, but that Standard American English should be taught to them as a foreign language rather than as it's taught to native speakers. Nobody ever seriously suggested that Ebonics be "taught" in and of itself until a half-baked, out-of-context version of the concept was promoted through fallacious media stories in the '90s. The idea precedes the '90s controversy by over 20 years.
Uriel   Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:16 pm GMT
I would still ask: is it really so different from standard American that it is really hindering anyone from learning math, science, etc. in school? And what about other nonstandard dialects? I have white southern cousins who grew up saying "we's fixin' to go" instead of "we are about to go" -- different verb, different auxiliary verb, nonagreement of subject and auxiliary verb. Do we extend dialectical instruction to them as well? Is their schoolwork really going to suffer for it? I think they would feel patronized, and so would black Ebonics speakers. They know how to switch gears when needed.