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Originally Posted by chabib

unless a black kid is aware of the Nguzo Saba and is utilizing ebonics as a way of identifying with the practice of kwanzaa, they have no genuine claim on the concept of ebonics. when you remove intention and awareness from what ebonics actually is, yr essentially left with an excuse for creative illiteracy. i'm all for creativity, but illiteracy is sure a shame.

meh, that's a gross misunderstanding of the language acquisition process-- unless you're joking (i hope you are!). language is acquired during infancy and it's modeled from the environment (usually the parents). the grammar and phonetics are learned unconsciously. the phonetics get pretty much frozen after a certain age. "intention" has nothing but absolutely nothing to do with it. our native language grows in our brains the way trunks grow on elephant's faces.

part of the problem of illiteracy as i see it is that there is little public understanding of this linguistic difference.

when black kids from certain communities go home, to their parents and neighbors, they don't hear "standard" english, they don't speak "standard" english, yet they are expected to read and write it without any adjustment? additionally, these kids aren't taught to read and write in their colloquial language. does the educational system account for this difference? or does it simply overlook it? that depends on the school district i suppose...

we're talking about 2 language systems here, and their difference is being overlooked. i suspect that the high rates of illiteracy have a lot to do with that fact. you speak one language at home and are expected to already know another one in school. i know that's the problem in other communities (among native americans for example, where "traditional" bilingual education doesn't work for various reasons-- but that would be another long explanation).

on a related note:

when dante wrote the divine commedy in his native tongue-- that of the market, of the streets--he was derided for not writing in the literary language of his day (latin). funny, nowadays we read dante as "high-brow" literature (those of us who read anyway).

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ah i see you posted something else after. ebonics would be different from franglais in your case but likely not in some parts of say new hampshire.

and anyway maybe that's the reason why you grew up to be a radical

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noumenal - no i think you are sitting on a linguistic and political hotspot, and it's an interesting contradiction. i don't think there's an easy solution-- i don't think there should be a separate SAT either-- i only think that your students need to be aware of the situation in the sense that they are adjusting to a foreign language. the reason it doesn't get recognized as such is as i said power and politics. why is galician not called portuguese? because galicia is in spain and they had different kings. but anyway, as long as both you and the students know the game that's being played, it's fine to enforce standard english-- the moment the game gets confused with "truth" however is when i see problems happening. "if you want a good job, learn to speak whitey". hah hah. ok.