Thursday, March 10, 2005
"Take a look, it's in a book..."
One of the biggest concerns I have as I plan lessons, beyond my apparent lack of classroom management is the fundamental lack of student literacy and numeracy skills. When I actually receive a paper which claims, for example, that 1 x 1 = 2, it is obvious that there are some major deficiencies that need to be addressed.
Literacy issues can be even worse, as I have mentioned from time to time. My poor colleagues in the English department hesitate to give even a simple persuasive essay assignment because the students are unable to write coherent sentences. Reading assignments and discussions prove more effective, but finding relevant literature remains something of a challenge.
A lack of English literacy does not mean that my students are not reading however. Far from the case. But the books they choose. One of my more disruptive students left behind one of her reading selections today. She had been perusing it during my class review session and when I told her she basically said "whatever" and left. I had locked up my room by the time she came back and told her she could get it at the end of the day. She cussed me out. My students may not have a grasp of how to write a simple declarative sentence, but their profanity-laden imperatives are beyond reproach!
What I've learned from reading that book is that the matter is not getting our students to read. It's figuring out what the best thing is for them to read.
Consider the excerpt below:
"Yo, Im'ma bout to go downstairs and see if I can't catch some em strange for tonight." Pretty E said, getting up from the table carrying a bottle of Cristal.
"Hold up cousin, I'm coming too." Dog said, as he staggered off behind him.
"Yo, them two nigga'z is crazy." Hit Man said, answering his cell phone.
"You ain't lying," said Rasul, as he watched Hit Man curse out whoever was on the other end of the phone.
I picked this little excerpt basically at random, but it illustrates several linguistic points:
1. This book is not in English, or at least not standard English. The narration is written in English, but the grammar, syntax, and spelling of the dialogue are not. I suppose they qualify as Ebonics. But at the same time, I have to ask (or is it axe) is there a standardized set of grammatical rules for Ebonics? Or spelling? Can I pluralize anything by end it with "z" or is "s" still the preferred consonant for conclusions?
2. In juxtaposing conventional English with dialect, the assumption is implicitly made that the two are equivalent. Although both have their place, the ability to seamlessly alternate between the two depending on social setting is a skill my students lack, and it is vital that they obtain it before leaving high school. This sort of literature makes this task all the more challenging. Just looking at the quotes above consider how a prospective employer would appreciate reading a student statement using words like "em" (third person plural pronoun), improper subject verb agreement (You know what I is talking about...), and contractions that may or may not exist. ("Im'ma", for example puzzles me. Does it stand for "I am a..." or just "I am." And if the latter, why not just use "I'm"?)
3. Slang does still have a place in literature. No doubt of that, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner, all the classic writers and even modern works like A Confederacy of Dunces, which I am currently reading, make excellent and approrpriate use of dialect. The problem I have is not with slang, Ebonics, or colloquial speech. It's with a system that places so much emphasis on the mere act of reading that students are not instilled with the critical thinking ability to separate between slang and non-slang language.
The book itself is actually reviewed on Amazon, and I include a link for those who are curious here . Interestingly one reviewer even commented that although the storyline was ok, the text had a lot of grammatical errors. "And I don't mean the slang because I speak and understand slang very well," The reviewer notes. "Who ever edited this book should be fired."
So not only is it improper English...but it's improper improper English. So where does that leave the impressionable student readers? Incapable of speaking either version of the language properly and therefore doomed to a rather precarious fate so far as the world of employment and higher education are concerned. A vicious cycle perpetuated not via the usual means of economic or racial discrimination, but through that most insidious virus, the written word.
Afterthought: One final interesting thing of note is the book's back cover which describes the publishing house behind this particular text. I quote:
"The dark side, the wrong road is where the criminal behaviors, etc, is just reality...Whether it's white or blue collar crime, robbery or murder, drug trafficking or prostitution, we are all just one misfortune away from falling into the arms of what society calls a dead end."
No doubt a rather grim statement, and yet I smile when I realize that I heard the same idea, that all it takes is one bad day to drive a man over the edge, stated with far more eloquence and panache in a graphic novel I recently purchased at my local bookstore, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore.
One of the biggest concerns I have as I plan lessons, beyond my apparent lack of classroom management is the fundamental lack of student literacy and numeracy skills. When I actually receive a paper which claims, for example, that 1 x 1 = 2, it is obvious that there are some major deficiencies that need to be addressed.
Literacy issues can be even worse, as I have mentioned from time to time. My poor colleagues in the English department hesitate to give even a simple persuasive essay assignment because the students are unable to write coherent sentences. Reading assignments and discussions prove more effective, but finding relevant literature remains something of a challenge.
A lack of English literacy does not mean that my students are not reading however. Far from the case. But the books they choose. One of my more disruptive students left behind one of her reading selections today. She had been perusing it during my class review session and when I told her she basically said "whatever" and left. I had locked up my room by the time she came back and told her she could get it at the end of the day. She cussed me out. My students may not have a grasp of how to write a simple declarative sentence, but their profanity-laden imperatives are beyond reproach!
What I've learned from reading that book is that the matter is not getting our students to read. It's figuring out what the best thing is for them to read.
Consider the excerpt below:
"Yo, Im'ma bout to go downstairs and see if I can't catch some em strange for tonight." Pretty E said, getting up from the table carrying a bottle of Cristal.
"Hold up cousin, I'm coming too." Dog said, as he staggered off behind him.
"Yo, them two nigga'z is crazy." Hit Man said, answering his cell phone.
"You ain't lying," said Rasul, as he watched Hit Man curse out whoever was on the other end of the phone.
I picked this little excerpt basically at random, but it illustrates several linguistic points:
1. This book is not in English, or at least not standard English. The narration is written in English, but the grammar, syntax, and spelling of the dialogue are not. I suppose they qualify as Ebonics. But at the same time, I have to ask (or is it axe) is there a standardized set of grammatical rules for Ebonics? Or spelling? Can I pluralize anything by end it with "z" or is "s" still the preferred consonant for conclusions?
2. In juxtaposing conventional English with dialect, the assumption is implicitly made that the two are equivalent. Although both have their place, the ability to seamlessly alternate between the two depending on social setting is a skill my students lack, and it is vital that they obtain it before leaving high school. This sort of literature makes this task all the more challenging. Just looking at the quotes above consider how a prospective employer would appreciate reading a student statement using words like "em" (third person plural pronoun), improper subject verb agreement (You know what I is talking about...), and contractions that may or may not exist. ("Im'ma", for example puzzles me. Does it stand for "I am a..." or just "I am." And if the latter, why not just use "I'm"?)
3. Slang does still have a place in literature. No doubt of that, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner, all the classic writers and even modern works like A Confederacy of Dunces, which I am currently reading, make excellent and approrpriate use of dialect. The problem I have is not with slang, Ebonics, or colloquial speech. It's with a system that places so much emphasis on the mere act of reading that students are not instilled with the critical thinking ability to separate between slang and non-slang language.
The book itself is actually reviewed on Amazon, and I include a link for those who are curious here . Interestingly one reviewer even commented that although the storyline was ok, the text had a lot of grammatical errors. "And I don't mean the slang because I speak and understand slang very well," The reviewer notes. "Who ever edited this book should be fired."
So not only is it improper English...but it's improper improper English. So where does that leave the impressionable student readers? Incapable of speaking either version of the language properly and therefore doomed to a rather precarious fate so far as the world of employment and higher education are concerned. A vicious cycle perpetuated not via the usual means of economic or racial discrimination, but through that most insidious virus, the written word.
Afterthought: One final interesting thing of note is the book's back cover which describes the publishing house behind this particular text. I quote:
"The dark side, the wrong road is where the criminal behaviors, etc, is just reality...Whether it's white or blue collar crime, robbery or murder, drug trafficking or prostitution, we are all just one misfortune away from falling into the arms of what society calls a dead end."
No doubt a rather grim statement, and yet I smile when I realize that I heard the same idea, that all it takes is one bad day to drive a man over the edge, stated with far more eloquence and panache in a graphic novel I recently purchased at my local bookstore, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore.
