Thursday, September 6, 2012
The Great Divide
The great clash between linguistic reality and social acceptance for dialects is a tough one to tackle in the classroom. Students pick up on the social attitudes towards various dialects. As a result, we as teachers must be careful about what bias we may pass on to our students. I believe it is our responsibility to teach the variations in dialects while also teaching standard English to prepare them to function in higher institutions. I think it is quite possible to teach various dialects without raising one above the other as "right" or wrong". Social Studies do a similar thing with religions all the time--they teach the basic concepts without promoting one religion over the other. We can do the same with dialects. Teach the basic grammar, syntax, word structure etc of a specific dialect. This will teach students the difference between standard English and said dialect and help them realize one style is not necessarily "correct." However, we must also explain that standard English is the most accepted among higher institutions, businesses, etc. These lessons will help prepare students to function in multiple aspects of society using various dialects and will help wipe out ignorance concerning "uneducated" ways of speaking.
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Hi Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteYour views are extremely similar to mine! I completely agree that with the education of other dialects it should still be understood that unfortunately, standard english is necessary when facing a successful business world. However, I wonder, how you can teach a young student that standard english is more socially accepted without making it sound like it is superior to others? I struggle with this question myself. How can we as teachers explain that one will get farther in the business world when speaking standard english without sending across a wrong message that it is "better"?
-Hillary Calef
Hi Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteI like the comparison you made to social studies and its treatment of religion. I hadn't thought of that before. You're right: we've evolved to a point where all religions are (for the most part) treated equally in an academic setting. This isn't always the case outside of the classroom, of course, but the same thing happens with dialects of English. It makes me wonder if it's something that we just haven't talked about enough. It takes time for people's ideas about "correctness" to change, especially in the classroom. If we bring these ideas into the high school classroom and start students thinking about them before they get to college, we'll have made that much more progress toward making this conversation acceptable and maybe even commonplace. Thanks!