Craig Hancock wrote:
>     
>     The natural language of our students is a wonderful starting point
> for growth, but it will not be a starting point for growth if we  don't
> demand (expect) significant development. In general, they are capable of
> far more than we are asking of them, and most students want to be pushed
> when that comes from a respect for their capabilities.

This seems to me to be coming from a very strange position. "A wonderful
starting point"? "Significant development"? I'd like to see these terms
defined. Starting point for what? What is this starting point, exactly?
Development of what? "Capable of far more than we expect of them"? I'm
wondering who is in this 'we'.

Kids (incl. those who grow up with nonstandard English) are all way past
any starting point when they come to school, linguistically speaking. If
you take an additive rather than replacive approach to cultivating
standard English, the starting point is that the kids are normal human
beings capable of learning another language/dialect. All kids are at
that point. Of course, mainstream kids have an advantage because their
language is already relatively close to that of school, but work like
that of Rachel Swords shows that such differences in starting point are
only an obstacle to learning for nonmainstream kids if the teaching
method is wrong. She closed the school achievement gap for minority
students in one year of third-grade instruction merely by positively
acknowledging the existence and value of the children's home dialect.

"Development" suggests that the kids are in some way un- or
underdeveloped. Sure, all kids are immature in normal ways in school,
and all kids need to develop greater talents in all skills. I think by
now research has shown that the high failure rates of non-mainstream
children are due to their mistreatment in school and possibly other
environments. Again, all kids will develop well if the teaching method
is beneficial and not harmful.

>      If Smitherman is right (I think she is), syntactic features are
> minor, and the major difference is what she calls a communicative style,
> which can almost be paraphrased as a different way of being in a
> communal world. 

The syntactic differences may well be small (I'm not sure I agree), but
they stick way out!!!! Maxine Hairston's study, a similar study I
conducted with my class, and other similar studies consistently find
that one small grammatical difference whose source is nonstandard
English elicits very high disapproval ratings. In my subject pool, half
the people didn't even notice standard-dialect 'mistakes' such as
failure to use 'whom' or 'between you and I'--the rate at which such
'mistakes' bothered the subjects was relatively small. A sentence with
'he don't' or a double negative, however, elicited at least 85%
objection rates. Therefore one small structural difference can do
significant harm to the impression a person makes. People are much more
forgiving of mistakes their social-class peers make than mistakes made
by their social 'inferiors'.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics 
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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