AAVE and ESL
In my studies to become a secondary school teacher, there has been a major focus on how to provide for the needs of students who speak – or are learning to speak – English as a second language. There are federal guidelines to that effect, and every state has its own program for meeting the federal requirements, in accordance with No Child Left Behind, and to continue to receive federal funding.
I’ve long understood that language and thought are two sides of the same coin, meaning that language acquisition is critical to learning. For students from other countries who come to live and learn in the United States, their ability to speak – and think – in English is vital in determining their success academically and in their future lives as participants in our society. I have never been of the ethnocentric mindset that non-English speakers should learn English out of some obligation to the country or its citizens. I think that it is well within a person’s rights to maintain their first language and never learn of bit of English, if they are able to live comfortably while doing so. Where an inability to speak English inconveniences native English speakers, as happens often enough in customer service scenarios, it is not the fault of the non-English speaker, but of the company that hired the worker in a capacity where speaking English was important. After all, where customer support lines are outsourced to other countries, it has nothing to do with customer convenience, and everything to do with the company maintaining their bottom line – that is, saving money.
What’s important is that we recognize that all language has equal value within its own cultural context. For non-English speakers who live in and work in settings where English is not used or even necessary, it certainly should not be required. Any talk of English being the “official” language of the United States is nothing less than xenophobic nonsense.
However, there is much to be said about the practicality of learning and using English in contemporary American society. Because of the great cultural plurality that makes up the United States milieu, it can be expected that there would be a common language to allow all of its disparate members to communicate. English is as good a choice of any, and is in fact the best choice, if only because it is the language of academia and of commerce. This means that in order for people to have equal access to education, and to be well-positioned to participate in the U.S. economy, it is important for them to learn English – and not just any English, but Standard American English (SAE). This is not about acquiescing to the prejudices of those who devalue other languages, but for the the obvious utility of knowing the language that undergirds American society.
Considering these things brought me to the idea of designating speakers of African-American Vernacular English as what Education calls “English Language Learners (ELLs), meaning that they should participate in programs teaching English as a second language (ESL). Thirteen years ago, the Oakland Unified School District passed a resolution that said that “Ebonics” – coterminous with AAVE – would be recognized as a language distinct from English, and that speakers of AAVE would be eligible for programs geared towards ELLs. At that time – mind you I was eighteen years old, uneducated, and self-righteous, a dangerous combination – I dismissed the Oakland resolution as so much nonsense. At that time, and well into my college years, I maintained that there was no such thing as AAVE, that it was little more than slang, or at my most thoughtful that it was a variation of English that resulted from socioeconomic inequality. For those reasons I thought it should not be recognized as a language, and I thought that doing so would only perpetuate a situation where African-Americans were not learning Standard American English.
It has been a frequent occurrence of late for me to come to a position in my adult life that is the complete opposite of my position in earlier years, and every time it has occurred I have been able to attribute the difference to the profound ignorance of my youth. By this I do not mean that I “came around” to an “adult” way of thinking, but literally that I was ignorant – I simply did not have the information needed to even take a position on a given issue. Such is the case again with AAVE and its recognition as a language. Imagine my dismay to discover that my own attitudes towards AAVE were rooted in racism – a subtle form of racism that devalues something due to its association with a group of people. Regarding AAVE not as a language, or worse, as some mutant or inferior variant, stems from the institutionalized idea that African-Americans and their culture are some perversion of humanity or American culture.
If you reject that idea outright, consider how you or others use the word “ghetto” – invariably to refer to something of inferior quality. And although the term came into use first to describe ethnically homogenous neighborhoods – especially Jewish ones – in the common parlance of today, “ghetto” refers to low-income African-American neighborhoods. So, if “ghetto” in some way equates to African-American or “black”, and it is used to describe something inferior, then what does that say to you? Think about it carefully. It is also similar to the current trend of referring to unfavorable things as “gay” – equating homosexuality with the negative. AAVE, for its association with African-Americans, is regarded as inferior.
What I failed to understand thirteen years ago when the Oakland “controversy” first made headlines, is that recognizing AAVE as a language did not preclude African-American students learning Standard American English. This was a misunderstanding shared by Jesse Jackson, who I mention here only for his questionable designation as an important “black leader”.
Jackson said:
“I understand the attempt to reach out to these children, but this is an unacceptable surrender, borderlining on disgrace. It’s teaching down to our children.”
[...]
“They cannot get a job at NBC or CBS or ABC unless they can master this language, and I’ll tell you they can master it if they are challenged to do so.”
These words indicate that Jackson – along with so many others – completely misunderstood the OUSD resolution. Far from “surrender”, the resolution was empowering to African-American students in a number of ways. As stated by TESOL – the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages:
TESOL affirms that the variety of English known as African American Vernacular English, Black English, Ebonics and sometimes by other names, has been shown through research to be a rule-governed, linguistic system, with itsown lexical, phonological, syntactic and discourse patterns and, thus, deserves pedagogical recognition.
The Board notes that effective educational programs recognize and value the linguistic systems that children bring to school. Their programs use these linguistics systems as an aid and resource to facilitate the acquisition of Standard American English. Research and experience have shown that children learn best if teachers respect the home language and use it as a bridge in teaching the language of the school and wider society. Likewise, if the children’s cultural and social backgrounds are valued, their self-respect and self-confidence are affirmed and new learning is facilitated.
Because language and thought are closely related, the achievement disparity between African-American and Euro-American students, sometimes falsely attributed to genetic differences, likely has more to do with the language disparity. If African-American students are speaking and thinking in AAVE, but are being assessed academically in Standard American English, then it is only logical to expect that those students would be at a disadvantage – the same disadvantage faced by students of other languages.
Now here you may be thinking that it’s a stretch to compare African-American students who speak AAVE, which is by definition a different form of English, to students from other countries who speak languages completely unlike English. To say that a student who only speaks Spanish is in the same position as the student who speaks AAVE would be a stretch, and so that’s not at all the point I am trying to make.
The fact – and this is perhaps the essential point of this essay - is that different students, varying by background, economic status, and other factors, for their differences have different needs. When it comes to language differences, educators recognize that English-language learners arrive in their classrooms at different levels of proficiency in speaking English. Most school districts identify and categorize students within different proficiency levels, ranging from “pre-emergent” – meaning that they do not speak any English – to “proficient”, meaning that they have a mastery of English equal to that of native speakers. There are varying levels between pre-emergent and proficient, such as basic, intermediate, and advanced. Most districts test their ELLs to determine their level upon entering school, with the expectation that they show adequate progress and within a few years time reach English proficiency.
The Oakland resolution intended to take this same approach with its African-American students, that is, to ensure that they had access to those resources that amend the language disparity between AAVE and SAE. It is a given that students with no knowledge of English have a special need for English acquisition, but what is taken for granted is that all students born and raised in America should speak and have mastered standard American English, an idea that completely ignores the cultural diversity of the United States, including the different languages that are spoken here.
Beyond recognizing AAVE as a separate language for theoretical purposes, I suspect that were students who speak AAVE as their first (or only) language to be tested for English proficiency the same way as students from other countries, we may find that many of them test below the “proficient” designation. Ordinarily it is up to parents to tell the school districts whether or not their children will need ESL accommodations, but because those needs may not even recognized by the parents – let alone school administrators – many students are held to the proficient standard even where they are not proficient. Where AAVE is dismissed as a mere dialect or slang, the needs around English language acquisition are ignored, and the achievement gap is attributed either to economic differences or genetic deficiency.
Thirteen years after the Oakland resolution, even though I find myself doing a 180 degree turn and supporting it instead of denouncing it, there are a few places where my thoughts still diverge, and where I still maintain some of my earlier positions. The Oakland resolution stated that AAVE has a basis in the the languages of West Africa, particularly the Niger-Congo languages, and it is for that reason that it should be recognized as a separate language and not a mere dialect. I found this argument difficult to accept thirteen years ago, and I have my doubts about it today, but the difference today is that I recognize it as an argument for linguists, and withdraw from taking any position. I am convinced still that AAVE is rooted in socioeconomic inequality, in particular, the numerous institutional barriers between African-Americans and access to educational resources. Starting with slavery, African-Americans were only expected and allowed to learn enough English to fulfill their roles as servants, and propagating into the present with the fact that African-Americans remain disproportionately in the lower economic class, which invariably means diminished access to quality education.
The difference in my perspective now is that I understand that the “hows” or “whys” of AAVE are irrelevant. Only the “what” is important – that AAVE is a separate language. Even were we to continue to regard AAVE as a mere dialect, it would not change the fact that a language barrier exists, and that resources need to be directed towards bringing AAVE-speakers to proficiency in Standard American English.
While I am not suggesting that making the necessary connection between AAVE and ESL is a one-shot solution for closing the achievemnt gap, I think that in recognizing and addressing the disparity, we can expect the same positive results shown by speakers of other languages. To ignore the language barrier, and continuing to attribute achievement differences exclusively to economic – or worse, genetic – causes, is to deny students – and future citizens – an equal opportunity to succeed.