ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 27, 1996 TAG: 9612270080
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
IF SCHOOL districts have large numbers of students who do not speak English, they qualify for extra federal money.
The Oakland, Calif., schools have a large number of students who speak "Ebonics," or Black English.
Ergo, the Oakland School Board determined last week, Ebonics is a language of its own, and not simply a dialect of English.
One need not disparage Black English - which has a vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical structure of its own, and is not inherently "inferior" to other languages and dialects - to see the Oakland move for what it is: an action that reeks of condescension and cynicism, which almost certainly would do harm to the students whom the schools presumably exist to serve.
It is condescending in its implicit assumption that African-American children cannot be expected to learn standard English in the way that speakers of other American English dialects learn it. Or, even worse, its assumption that African-American children cannot be expected as adults to compete for the kinds of jobs - that is, virtually all the good ones - that require fluency in standard English.
The Oakland move is cynical in its unilateral avowal that Ebonics is a language separate from English. Actually, Ebonics is a dialect of American English, much like Southern Appalachian or Rural New England is a variation of the mother tongue.
The main test for determining whether two ways of speaking are different dialects of the same language or separate languages unto themselves is mutual intelligibility. But politics affects it, too. Dutch and German, for example, are closely related - but Dutch gets the benefit of the doubt as a separate language because it is the language of the Netherlands, a separate nation.
In the case of Black English, there is no sovereign state or economy of Ebonia - and to pretend otherwise is to foster a suicidal separatism not only from the language of the rest of the country, but also from the language that is rapidly becoming the tongue of commerce and science for the whole world.
If bilingual education had been proved effective, perhaps the cynicism and condescension in Oakland could be forgiven. But after years of experimentation, the main effect of teaching children first in their non-English home languages, and waiting until later to get around to English, seems to be hindering their ability to learn English and, ultimately, to do well in school.
Should that be surprising? As a rule, language skills of any sort are most readily and comprehensively acquired by young children. They become far more difficult to learn as children grow older. (Which is why, incidentally, it's such a shame that many schools in America wait until the secondary grades before trying to teach foreign languages.)
To be sure, young children from homes where standard English is spoken have a built-in advantage. But to defer teaching standard English does children without that advantage no favors. All it does is widen the opportunities gap.
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