In Lisa Delpit’s introduction of The Skin That We Speak, I was astonished by how the preschool children had already formed prejudices in their early age. The children viewed the Kenneth as the Black English box and Steve as the Standard English box; they also viewed the boxes as black and white respectively. This just shows that even when one does not think children notices the world around them, they do as seen by their judgments. It was interesting to read that even as a fetus in the womb, a child learns their “mother’s tongue”. The language that a parent speaks is the first language that a child identifies thus mimics. If a child grows up learning Black English, who am I to say that this is wrong? As a teacher, it is my job to teach; thus, no matter what language a child speaks I want to be able to teach him to better his language. Is there a way to combine BE and SE so that they do not conflict with students? Is there a chance that more and more teachers will begin to notice that this language barrier is a problem that is not simply fixed by failing a student because he speaks BE?
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In chapter 11 we see once again the placement of SE over AAVE yet I don't consider it racist. It seems to me as we go through a million different cases of pain and malice regarding language I'm never surprised by anything but the thought that those who wrote the book thought so highly of humanity, to think it so interesting that humans excluded other humans. It's not really a problem, it's just characteristics of humans to not treat other humans so great all the time. Obviously it has much to do with perspective. Even the children in the experiment were just using the processes embedded in their brains. I probably seem to be harping on my point, but it seems like we could find infinite cases of inequality among anything and everything regardless of race but consistent in one aspect: human. You can even go beyond humanity and just look at it as a trait of almost all life. However, I do recognize the fact that another trait of humanity is closeness and comfort among its members and perhaps that is why we try to dissolve these "problems".
ReplyDelete"It's not really a problem, it's just characteristics of humans to not treat other humans so great all the time." Fair enough, but does your perspective change when you think about it as a future teacher in terms of how you'd like to treat your future students? Somehow I'm guessing it might. In order to avoid the frustration of feeling like the authors are all saying the same thing, you might want to refocus your reading a little. Instead of applying it at a macro-level to all of humanity (because at that level, you're right; they're all saying the same thing), go micro and think about it in terms of the class you're currently observing and of yourself as a student and as a teacher. That might lead you to tease out what specifically makes a learning experience beneficial (or harmful) to a student, and how you might use such knowledge in your own classroom.
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