schools must allow for minority students to speak in ebonics

originally posted by: burgerbuddy

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
a reply to: crazyewok

Sounds like thy are stating that minorities have a lower IQ, doesn't it? Why is that racist if some people say it, but acceptable if others do, to use it as an excuse for special treatment?

Sorry, but if they can't speak properly, they don't get to pass through school!! Ebonics, as you stated, is NOT a language. I have watched a few videos in which the auto-CC feature couldn't pick out any words, and the people were "speaking", supposedly!

Make fun of the way they talk, like they do rednecks? 'Murica!

Or would that be racist?

That be some low brow BS tho to be speaking like that.

That's another issue; the same people who would demand we accept ebonics in schools seem to have no issue labeling the entire southern portion of the country as "ignorant", "backwoods", "uneducated", etc. The hypocrisy is amazing. I am Southern, as it happens, and can sound VERY Southern, if I wish, but most who hear me speak would have no idea. I learned, growing, up, to avoid the accent, to be better understood, and fit in better in different areas. Get me around certain family, and it's there, but it's not the norm, even at home. I can't imagine demanding that anyone learn the colloquialisms I knew as a child, to teach me in school!!

Setting people up to fail, telling them that slang talk is acceptable anywhere, and acting as though they can't learn, is so wrong.

I don't know why so many are up in arms?

I thought it was "cool" to be uneducated, hate on science, and despise proper education? I mean, we're all for gutting the education system that teaches so-called "proper English" right?

I mean, all of us are more qualified to teach our children ourselves anyway, right? At least that way we can make sure our kids know exactly what we want them to know, and what we don't want them to know!

After all, education is a liberal conspiracy anyway!

a reply to: dragonridr

Yeah, that's why everyone goes to college in their 20's and don't retain a thing.
Yes, kids brains are like sponges, adults can learn a lot more in a shorter space of time if they know how.

Age is no excuse for knowledge retention.

a reply to: dragonridr

Well unfortunately its a reality of their upbringing

Fortunately it's a reality of being lazy

originally posted by: GreenGunther
a reply to: dragonridr

Well unfortunately its a reality of their upbringing

Fortunately it's a reality of being lazy

Has nothing to do with it at all. You learn like everyone else from friends and family, If your parents speak say spanish you learn to speak spanish. If your parents have a poor education your at a disadvantage when it comes to learning a language, But is it fair to hold a child responsible for who his parents are. Id like to think we are better than that.

originally posted by: dragonridr

originally posted by: GreenGunther
a reply to: dragonridr

Well unfortunately its a reality of their upbringing

Fortunately it's a reality of being lazy

But is it fair to hold a child responsible for who his parents are. Id like to think we are better than that.

I'm not worried about the kids - I'm worried about adults who think it's acceptable.
And a lot of kids grow up with #ty parents, I don't see it as an excuse.

a reply to: dragonridr

If anything, the only valid excuse I can see is epigenetics ie. childs mind did not fully develop, or developed in differing direction than what is suited to for basic intelligence.

English is not my first language, English is a piece of cake compared to my home language, English is everywhere, it's the main language business is conducted in around the world.

It's easy if you give half a crap...

going straight Idiocracy. There is a book that came out called "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". Here it is for free. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com...

Mrs. Iserbyt has also documented the gradual transformation of our once academically successful education system into one devoted to training children to become compliant human resources to be used by government and industry for their own purposes. This is how fascist-socialist societies train their children to become servants of their government masters. The successful implementation of this new philosophy of education will spell the end of the American dream of individual freedom and opportunity. The government will plan your life for you, and unless you comply with government restrictions and regulations your ability to pursue a career of your own choice will be severely limited.

This is all on purpose I'm sure.

i wanna know? Duz dat mean wez coo to speak ebonics up in dis piece?

a reply to: crazyewok

thats like asking jamaicans not to speak in patwois

how horrible to ask a people to ignore their cultural roots

Just because it doesnt adhere to your standards of human interaction doesnt mean its any less complex or less of a language

Let them speak in ebonics if they like , what difference does it make , as long as they learn and understand the english language then who cares right ?

originally posted by: GreenGunther
a reply to: dragonridr

If anything, the only valid excuse I can see is epigenetics ie. childs mind did not fully develop, or developed in differing direction than what is suited to for basic intelligence.

English is not my first language, English is a piece of cake compared to my home language, English is everywhere, it's the main language business is conducted in around the world.

It's easy if you give half a crap...

So because they learned to speak differently than you they are undeveloped? English isnt mine either not sure your point????? Growing up in germany i learned german and well my mother was Russian. So i learned both German and Russian later when i became older i learned english and even attended a military school as my dad worked for the US military. So i stayed on base and became fluent in english. But had my teachers not understood german i wouldnt have learned english.

a reply to: booyakasha

Yo sho if you wants ta ah dont gots uh problem wif it in the hood.

Truth is its kind of fun trying to get it right lol

Here is a study about grammar and why inner city kids have problems with english,


web.stanford.edu...

Calm down leftie twinkies, no one is trying to culturally oppose any one, no one is going to send speech Police after people.

The point that seems to being missed by many is that its not about how people talk in their free time, this is about how you speak in school. The point of the school system is being destroyed here, when you attend school you are given the choice to learn as much as possible to aid you in later life, if you decide to ignore it then that is up to you but to bastardise English just for a minority is beyond stupid, it destroys the point of the teaching.

What is with all this dumbing down to allow people to be accepted, do we allow that with technology and science, oh lets try our best NOT to learn as much because 2% of the knuckle draggers at the back can't be bothered. Sorry, I don't care what colour you are, education is there to HELP you, its a freedom to learn that much of the world simply does not have and to ignore it is degrading YOURSELF, I'll be stuffed if my daughters college time is going to be degraded simply because a few refuse to learn. I had the same issue when she was at lower school and her and other kids were being held back because the teachers had to help the new to the UK kids catch up and learn English. Personally I'm of the opinion that you learn the language BEFORE you come here otherwise we will continue to have this mess we have now.

But it irks me to hear the drug dealers who walk past my window every 20 mins or so with their infantile way of speaking and I'd be horrified as a parent if my local school decided to allow that sort of speech while in school during a lesson, its bad enough its used in the playground but to allow it to be swapped in instead of proper English...NO...

What the hell is wrong with people, others willing to degrade many to suit a few, this isn't about if the education system has abandoned these few, its about these few abandoning the education system. I'm sorry but if Shaniqua and her mates sit at the back of the class looking at their phone, making dumb comments and ignoring the education then its NOT the teachers point to engage them, class sizes and other loaded timetables make teaching bloody hard, its time to stop blaming the teacher and now blame the child and parent who probably don't give a stuff. I'm fed up of seeing these kids who become disruptive and ignorant getting chances upon chances, my friend was a table tennis instructor in a youth initiative, they built these so called deprived kids a youth club with top equipment and had really focused good people looking to help these 'kids', they burnt it down in 2 weeks, it was rebuilt and they pretty much destroyed the equipment and used the place to do drugs.

Allowing them to dumb down the system to attempt to help these is pointless.

a reply to: Mclaneinc

Your opinion isnt worth our time since you want to involve politics. Im sorry if you live in a crappy neighborhood but it appears to have warped your view. Not all black kids are drug dealers. And yes learning english can be difficult when you were taught to speak in double negatives etc.

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: crazyewok

thats like asking jamaicans not to speak in patwois

how horrible to ask a people to ignore their cultural roots

Just because it doesnt adhere to your standards of human interaction doesnt mean its any less complex or less of a language

Let them speak in ebonics if they like , what difference does it make , as long as they learn and understand the english language then who cares right ?

Jamaicans speak English, yes it will be accented most of the time, but it's one of those nations that export English teachers to Asia along side Canada, The U.S.A, Australia and England, and while Jamaicans are proud of their patois they opted not to make it an official language but recognize it's cultural importance , come to think of it they just recently opted to make Spanish a second official language so as to better engage their neighbors..

This is a great video where Stephen Fry speaks about the elitism of language, but also discusses context and setting as important elements required for clarity. It is a lovely video and made me think about it.

Is this the same as allowing ebonics? Language changes all the time. I cannot map a sentence anymore, but this has no bearing on my ability to community of thought.

However, one would think that in university, after 12 years of proper education in language (since this person is an undergraduate), they would not need to use their colloquialisms. If I studied French for 12 years months and months at a time, I better know how to speak French properly... and not go to a French University and demand that they accommodate me.

Anyhow, enjoy the video, I felt it quite relevant.

originally posted by: dragonridr
a reply to: Mclaneinc

Your opinion isnt worth our time since you want to involve politics. Im sorry if you live in a crappy neighborhood but it appears to have warped your view. Not all black kids are drug dealers. And yes learning english can be difficult when you were taught to speak in double negatives etc.

And your view isn't worth any ones time since you can't even be bothered to read what I said, did I single out Black people, sorry, didn't happen.

And cut the dribble and the cheap grammar shots especially when you fail to capitalise English. As for politics, amazing, you liberal lot spout politics and then try to suppress even the tiniest part that I used.

Btw, do you speak for the entire forum, "it isn't worth our time", seems you think you do..

Lastly, thank you for dodging what was said, if you think allowing Ebonics in to the education system works then we all have failed. You also miss the clear politics going on here, why on earth would we want to destroy education..

Back of the class son....D

Man you sound so crazy and ignorant. I can't take people like you serious. Thanks for the laugh.reply to: iTruthSeeker

originally posted by: Spider879

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: crazyewok

thats like asking jamaicans not to speak in patwois

how horrible to ask a people to ignore their cultural roots

Just because it doesnt adhere to your standards of human interaction doesnt mean its any less complex or less of a language

Let them speak in ebonics if they like , what difference does it make , as long as they learn and understand the english language then who cares right ?

Jamaicans speak English, yes it will be accented most of the time, but it's one of those nations that export English teachers to Asia along side Canada, The U.S.A, Australia and England, and while Jamaicans are proud of their patois they opted not to make it an official language but recognize it's cultural importance , come to think of it they just recently opted to make Spanish a second official language so as to better engage their neighbors..

This is why I said people are missing the point, how we communicate beyond the education system is as important but the point here is getting the education in initially which won't help if we bastardise it to suit a few. I have a few friends whose parentage is Jamaican and yes, its not direct English but these same guys do KNOW proper English and that is the difference here. What we need are the basics installed in the children in countries that speak English, what you do after the education system has done is up to you but at least the info is in there to help you.

Ebonics will destroy the education system..

a reply to: MOMof3

We tend to think of Old English as being a uniform language, spoken all throughout the British Isles, but that simply was not the case. During the period where this language was forming, there were areas, just a handful of miles apart from one another, whose residents did not speak one anothers language too terribly well. Military elements and leadership classes often spoke and wrote more importantly, in Latin. People in the far flung places, Scotland, the hills of Wales, the Irish, were speaking older tongues even than that, having nearly no relation whatever to the Old English you are speaking of.

Furthermore, you have to understand that the vast majority of people living in the British Isles never actually learned to write the language they spoke in any depth, and that trend continued until quite recently, in historical terms at any rate. This is shown up most thoroughly by the fact that well into the Industrial Revolution, it was still the case that a survey taken by the government in 1816, showed that out of 12,000 or so parishes in England, some 3,500 of them had NO SCHOOL AT ALL.

So back in the period covered by the prevalence of Old English, it ought to come as no surprise at all, that the vast majority of people, if they wrote at all, wrote in whatever scrawl they could make their close associates understand, rather than being able to communicate effectively across local boundaries, leave alone write and be understood just as well next door to them, as they would have been by a correspondent at the other end of the country. Only the relatively well off, the powerful families would have this ability in the main, and most communication meant for a wide audience (within that rarefied subset of the population at least) would be written in Latin, because it was a codified language which all correspondents would be expected to be educated enough to read well.

The Mercian, West Saxon, Northumbrian and Kentish dialects, spoken in the geographical areas they relate to, were VERY different from one another, the northern most taking quite a bit more influence from the Norse languages, so much so that much of the language, where it was written down, would be runic, rather than using the alphabet with which we are all so familiar today.

The changes which have occurred between the Old English period, and now, occurred not just because of invasion, but because the way we lived began to change, and change rapidly. At one time, a man could go from infant to the grave without ever traveling more than a handful of miles from his house. He would not require to send a letter, or post a notice, and so his communication pool would be limited to the people living in the same village, or even the people working the same small plot of land, from the same humble hut.

In that situation, speaking a hyper local dialect, and being able to communicate only with members of ones own family or their neighbours, was just fine, because it was not necessary for their lives and livelihoods, that communication travel any further than that. But great changes were afoot. The Norman conquest of 1066, inserted a whole other load of linguistic elements, which took HUNDREDS of years to take over, resulted in what we know as Middle English today. The exact period that it became ubiquitous is hard to nail down, and much argued about by scholars, but 1150 to 1500 is considered a decent approximation of the period during which Middle English was spoken. The difficulty here is that the Norman conquest involved a great deal of destruction, and this naturally extended to many written works, as well as lives lost and property stolen, or destroyed. So the written record (which, once again, would have come from only a relative few authors, compared with the number of people in the country at the time) was very much interrupted at this point. And even after this transition, when talking of those who write we are still not talking about a language written or spoken the same way, universally. We are still talking about a language which many people simply never learned to write at all, again, those who did, mostly having jobs specifically requiring it, or being of a certain social class which meant that they were at leisure to study, rather than work fields or tend animals all day.

Great changes were also caused when revolution became necessary, because it was necessary for the humble farmer to be as capable of communicating previous to, or during battle, as it was for the better educated military. Simply put, failure to communicate would have seen every revolt crushed, no progress made. As it happens though, members of the Royalty found to their dismay, that effective revolt was possible, and suffered the consequences of it over the years. This was a change not in language spoken, but in how many could read it.

But it is worth ramming home once again, that language as she is spoken and written, has only been universalised in the last couple of hundred years. However, the reason that ever happened in the first place was because it became necessary to compile a series of words and spellings of them, which could be used by anyone, from any place in the British Isles, to communicate with anyone else in the British Isles. The urgency for this came about as the creation of the British Empire began. It was necessary to have a language which could unambiguously communicate concepts across HUGE spaces, without regional dialect or habits of writing, getting in the way of effective communication. Battle plans, naval orders, business communications relating to amounts, costs, negotiations, these had to be conducted in a manner which could be scrutinised, and in a manner which left no room for confusion, no matter from which part of the Empire the communication came, and so increasingly, the language was codified further, but again, not yet absolutely universal to all members of the commonwealth, even those in the home nations.

It was not until the Industrial Revolution came along, that the ability to read and write was considered a necessity for all subjects of the realm, and it was during the Industrial Revolution that the first modern standards for education were assembled, as a result of the efforts of Liberal activism, as much as anything else. It was understood by those in charge also, that in order to work well in the factories, fields and other places of work, to which the young people of the day could expect to go at some stage, that they be able to read and write well, in order that they be able to take instruction, and make notes. Whether apprenticed to an architect or engineer, or put to work in a mill or a field, the children were expected to learn to use the English language as she was being spoken at the time, a version of English that had been codified during the expansion, the creation of the Empire. But as I alluded to earlier, even in the year 1816, schooling and therefore the standardised English language, had not yet been expanded to all places and parishes.

.....

a reply to: MOMof3

......And here is the crux of the issue.

The reason that the English language has evolved over time has been different in every era. However, the reason that the current format of the English language is of any use as a communication tool, is that it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the entire world. More people who speak a second language than the one they grew up with, speak English than any other language. It is also considered the International Common Tongue, for this precise reason. Because it holds this position, it is the common language used to discuss business on the international level, to discuss science related topics, to pen a great deal of the scholarly articles created on the planet, and as a linguistic bridge between every continent in the world. Learning it and doing so with a will, can allow a person from nearly anywhere, to communicate effectively with a person from nearly anywhere else, and that is really what the issue boils down to.

English language as we know it now, can be said without over much concern about being in error, to largely be a product of a need to allow a great many people, to communicate in common. By ignoring or buggering about with it as it was before it became a universally recongised tongue, no detriment can have come about. But now that it is established as an internationally spoken language, a language of the sciences, of political discourse, of understanding between people whose mother tongues are not common to one another, inserting a change to it now, simply to please a small unit of people, will cut that people off from ability to communicate with the rest of the English speakers on the planet. That is a great deal of people, more than half the worlds nations have a significant number of English speakers in them, so not only would creating a subdivision of English, AND REFUSING TO LEARN THE STANDARD VERISON, create a situation where individuals who refuse to learn that standard version, are less capable of being understood by their countrymen, they would be cutting themselves off from the vast majority of the citizens of the world as well.

That is not something that any educator ought to be prepared to allow. It is utterly wrong to permit that. As I say, there is a great argument to be made about perhaps creating another class for the alternative version of the language, as long as students cannot wriggle out of learning the common tongue, known to the rest of the world. But permitting one segment of a student body, to cut themselves off from their fellows, and the rest of the world, simply because they are bored, or dislike the standard English for cultural reasons, is to allow these students to shoot themselves in the foot, and no educator worth a damn would allow that.