Group of Professors Calls for End to Standard English as the Norm
“We demand that teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects white mainstream English”
The basic argument here is that standard English is, you guessed it, racist.
The College Fix reports:
‘Black linguistic justice’: Professors demand end to standard English as the norm
A national professional association of writing instructors recently published a list of demands that argued the current emphasis on standard English is rooted in racism and called for a complete overhaul of how language is taught.
It was published by a subcommittee with the Conference on College Composition and Communication, part of the National Council of Teachers of English.
The statement called for an end to “White Mainstream English,” arguing such an action would “decolonize” students’ minds and the English language, as well as help students “unlearn white supremacy.”
The demands were written by five English professors and a writing scholar and the document is titled: “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!”
“The language of Black students has been monitored, dismissed, demonized—and taught from the positioning that using standard English and academic language means success,” the professors argued.
They added such a set-up “creates a climate of racialized inferiority toward Black Language and Black humanity.”
The roughly 3,000-word statement emphasizes five main demands as solutions:
We demand that teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects white mainstream English
We demand that teachers stop teaching black students to code-switch! Instead, we must teach black students about anti-black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy
We demand that political discussions and Praxis Center Black Language as teacher-researcher activism for classrooms and communities
We demand black linguistic consciousness
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Comments
These fools need a reeducation. Making blacks feel better is not superior to good communication. We need a whole new group of teachers of English. These people are fools.
Well, whatever these people are speaking, it ain’t standard English.
My white students write just as badly as my, er, students of color, whether black or Hispanic. This proposal is silly and will only limit students’ ability to compete in the workplace. Well, until no one knows how to write, and then it won’t matter.
So this is Affirmative Action for language? Debase the standards so everybody can qualify without even having to put in any work?
Here’s a cool idea—if we eliminate the educational hierarchy then we can also eliminate schools entirely. If information comes from the bottom and filters up, the top is just playing catch-up and has no real function.
But I have to wonder how technical and scientific papers would come out in Ebonics. Probably about as well as software comments written by Klingon programmers.
In some places, white mainstream English is not even English. Listen to a lot of white people – some well into their thirties – who cannot compose declarative sentences without “like”, “yah-know”, “and stuff”, or the ever-grating uprise at the end of every sentence.
“I said…” is now “I’m like…”
“You’re joking”, or, “You’re kidding” is now “Are you [excrement]-ing me?”
“That is wrong”, is now , “That totally sucks”..
Do the professors include this as acceptable? Or, do they just mean the babbling of those who remain purposefully ignorant?
The first, and best, consequence of their position is that there is now no need for teachers of English. Save retraining costs: Shoot them all.
Idiocracy is no longer just a movie.
A national professional association of writing instructors
Sorry, no. They are NOT ‘professionals’ in any sense of that word.
a writing scholar
WTH is that?
roughly 3,000-word statement
Well, they obviously never learned about being concise.
We demand that political discussions and Praxis Center Black Language as teacher-researcher activism for classrooms and communities
Or grammar, as that sentence makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. (that’s aside from the word salad aspect of it.)
All of the teachers/scholars associated with this should be blacklisted from teaching, speaking to educational establishments or groups, and sent to work in the salt mines of Rura Penthe until death or a return to reality occurs. Sheesh.
One of my black friends has 5 children: Three became MD’s, one became a science professor, and one became a lawyer. (There’s a black sheep in every family.) My friend taught his kids to use perfect English (and I mean perfect) and to value their education and work hard at school.
The idiot professors mentioned in this article would doom black students to a perpetual lower class standing because of their poor English. That is nothing but Jim Crow racism. They have no business teaching anything, especially writing, in a college.
I speak jive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzIcec_bQss
What be dose white boys talkin’ about? juts ’cause illiterates can’t pseak tsandard english doesn’t mean de rets of us should be forced to pseak like illiterates.
stupid ideas like dat be why academia should be abolished and diversity hires should eitheh go to prison o get honets jobs. O juts be lined up againts a wall and, ahem, done rose petals trown at dem.
Thirty years ago my daughter’s 10th grade English teacher told me that she was not allowed to teach English grammar because it would supposedly disadvantage members of some ethnic communities. She also said that she had students begging her to teach them English grammar after school.
Ebonics should translate well in the international community.
What need do we have anymore for professors of English?