“It is the duty of teachers to guide all students to literacy with equal rigor without ever telling them that the language they speak is wrong,” says Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates. Dr. Purcell-Gates essay in The Skin That We Speak is about students’ literacy being affected by their income levels and the stereotypes they face because of it. She also talks about how the lack of reading and writing in homes leads to illiterate students. She stresses that stereotypes and teacher attitudes towards poor income students have created a major fault in the education system. She strives to inform the reader that students are marked from the beginning as failures and being ignored by their teachers and school leaders.
Dr. Purcell-Gates brings up a great point about education, “With these socio-politically driven attitudes toward the language that people speak, think with, and learn with, is it any wonder that there is a class difference in learning and achievement? She hits it right on the mark! Students from the middle classes and students from low level incomes receive the same education in public schools. Why then do some excel better than others? Is it the fault or stereotype that the teacher displays? Or is it the lack of effort, perseverance, faith, or determination by the student?
Because teachers put such great effort into the success of their students and should never give up on their students, students are expected to put forth the same effort. While I believe that we should do what we can to help students who want to learn to read and write, sometimes there are students who have no motivation. Once a teacher has done all that he/she can do, the rest of the job is left up to the students. I believe that students need to put forth the same amount of perseverance as the teacher does. Without the student cooperation, the attempt would be a waste of time.
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Ultimately, I agree with you, Rebekah. For learning to commence, both the teacher and the learner need to be active participants. But maybe, in such a scenario, the educator is at fault at a much deeper level.
ReplyDeleteJoan Wynne's "We don't talk right. You ask him." states that the educator is at fault for creating a learning environment in which other languages are wrong. She gives the example of her exemplary journalism students. These brilliant students were too intimidated to speak at a conference at which they had won an award for fear of not talking "right." It was not that the students were illiterate, or not willing to learn, or disinterested. They were very interested. But because of today's society, they were afraid to speak out.
Wynne's essay goes further to discuss this issue and how to overcome it. She details how the dominant language is chosen politically, not out of correctness, "One language clearly is not scientifically better than the other, but that one is politically more acceptable than the other--for one dialect belongs to the power structure." (211)
In order to embrace all dialects within our classrooms, Wynne suggests that we do the following: share language contradictions of mainstream culture to create discussion surrounding the issue, use a novel as a venue to explore diverse languages and dialects and issues of racism, and incorporating dialect units into middle school and high school classrooms. We must "create spaces in our classrooms to explore the political nature of language choices" and an environment that values diverse languages.