[omonra]

"but this is not the opinion of, among many notable others, the Oakland school board since 1996."

Yes - and they've been considered a joke because of it since 1996. The decision was "derided and criticized, most notably by Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who regarded it as an attempt to teach slang to children". So my opinion is shared by many prominent black leaders.

[Cushman]

So your answer to my entreaty is "no", then?

[omonra]

Yep :)

There is a very good essay on the topic by David Foster Wallace that someone linked to in the comments. I was pleasantly surprised that he makes exactly the same points as myself (albeit much more eloquently). Do check it out.

[Cushman]

I... am really confused. AFAICT there is only one DFW essay linked in these comments, and it seems to say basically what I, others here, and the linguistic consensus is saying: That there is a dialect of English used in the great majority of formal English speech and writing which is not spoken natively by many intelligent English speakers, and that the best way to deal with this is to acknowledge that their dialect is valid and appropriate when spoken with peers while also instructing them in the rules of SAE that will be necessary for them to interface effectively with formal society. There are differences in that DFW is talking about college-age writers who have to more or less be told to suck it up and learn it the hard way, while young schoolchildren can be taught much more effectively by early immersion, but the general thrust is much the same.

What are you reading in that? I'm legitimately, deeply baffled.

[omonra]

Exactly - I believe that school kids should also suck it up and learn to speak properly (I will not shy away from this nomenclature) early, rather than wait for college (and what about the majority who don't make it there?) where an English professor will give them this speech.

My impression of your viewpoint is that kids should be taught in AAVE and have a separate Standard English class to learn how 'white folks speak'.

That said - I have nothing against same kids using AAVE at home and with their friends if they prefer - as long as they realize that knowing SE is instrumental to their success in life.

I also have two niggling points to make: 1) Standard English is not a dialect. That's just a matter of definition. 2) I'd also say that 100% of formal English speech and writing is using it. As far as I can tell, anytime a dialect is used in a book (Huck Finn, William Faulkner) - it's done to demonstrate a character who speaks a particular way. Do you know works written in a dialect where it's not done to this purpose?

[Cushman]

> speak properly (I will not shy away from this nomenclature)

I just wish you'd reconsider this. It seems you acknowledge that if we could magically swap AAVE and ASE completely, such that news anchors talk about how Obama ain't got no sense and young black children go home crying because they were marked down for using "whom" as an object, nothing else would change; What you call proper English would be the despised language of the underclass and the well-to-do would look down on them every time they ignorantly used a single negative in a phrase that requires the full construction.

And if you do acknowledge this, can you see how the classification of English dialects into "proper" and "improper" groups, which could more rightly be labeled "potent" and "impotent", amounts to massive institutionalized racism (for ethnolects) and classism (for sociolects)?

Or to put it in more personal terms, could you see yourself recognizing that the privileged in our society will look down on the underprivileged for speaking their native language correctly while simultaneously making some effort to be less of one of those people yourself?

> My impression of your viewpoint is that kids should be taught in AAVE and have a separate Standard English class to learn how 'white folks speak'.

Is that your impression of how ESL is employed for young native Spanish speakers? It is not. Once or if a person is fluent enough in the second language that the classes designed for native speakers can be productive, they are included in those classes and graded accordingly (perhaps with auxiliary tutoring if necessary). What is your argument for forcing them into those classes before that point, or without that auxiliary tutoring?

> 1) Standard English is not a dialect. That's just a matter of definition.

Whose definition are you using? This is the first line from Wikipedia: "Standard English (often shortened to S.E. within linguistic circles) refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country." That is, by definition, a dialect. (Or, generically, a group of dialects.) Accordingly:

> 2) I'd also say that 100% of formal English speech and writing is using it.

And yet British news is written in British English and Australian news in Australian English and so on. The differences between these Englishes are relatively minor, apparently so minor that you do not consider them distinct dialects -- and perhaps that's my fault for not using the more PC term "variety" -- but they assuredly are.

Or do you mean to say that, since "standard" refers to the dialect used in formal speech in a country, the language of formal speech is by definition "standard"? To that I would say, 1) Duh, and, 2) So?