It ain't only Rock & Roll, it's Jazz too

Malignd malignd at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 13 12:00:55 CST 2003


<<Oh yes it has. Prescriptive grammar is taught.  When
the focus is not prescriptive grammar, but cultural
discourse (in this case African American cultural
discourse) and when students are taught some basic
linguistics and some language history, and when they
are taught that there language is not stupid,
inferior, a degenrative form of the ideal model of
standard english ...>>

Young white children in school have their language
corrected as well; they are taught a prescriptive
grammar as part of their education and with scant
regard to the colorful and expressive but incorrect
syntax often spoken by their parents at home.

That there exists additional biases in some cases
directed against Black children is undoubtedly true. 
But it doesn't follow from that that these Black
children are being further penalized by attempting to
teach them the rules of grammar, those governing
educated discourse, being taught to White children.

Teaching Black children instead some alternate Black
grammar seems to me a grievous, ghastly mistake, a
perverse idea that the most hardbitten of racists
would have been proud to have dreamed up.



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