Language is essential in all aspects of our lives. We use it every day to communicate with our family members, friends, classmates, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers. Educational institutions of all types across America, for the most part, teach Standard English to their students. I saw absolutely nothing wrong with this until my professor for my Writing Against Oppression class in college began teaching us about the multitude of English dialects and the oppression of those who didn’t speak Standard English. In order to understand this issue of how our culture in America values Standard English, restricting any other forms to be introduced in the classroom, we must open up this conversation and dig into the history of education, observe evidence of how institutions who have oppressed minorities through education, and speak to various professors and students who have an insight on this subject more than I do.
Hi, I’m Christina, a college senior majoring in journalism with a minor in writing studies who feels especially offended that she wasn’t taught this subject or made aware of this issue considering the blatant racism there is in most educational institutions to this DAY.
Just to give a little background into my own past and upbringing really quickly; I’m a 22-year-old student from Staten Island, NY. My mother’s side of the family is Filipino and my dad’s side is Italian. I grew up going to public school all of my life until high school where I went to a private, Catholic, predominantly white high school. We recited a mission statement every morning, prayed in Latin, had nuns, a convent on campus, ethics of religion classes (oof), and basically just the whole Catholic experience. Everyone who attended my school, including myself, was privileged. I was one of the few in a handful of people of color in my tiny graduating class of a hundred something students and I’m only half Filipino.
Anyways, I had to take speech classes as a child because my mother was afraid that I would be pronouncing words incorrectly and look/ sound uneducated. A speech pathologist would give me scented stickers and stamps to reward my construction and pronunciation of words in an overpriced, 30-minute session. It’s not that I had any “slang” terms popping out of my mouth at a young age, it was the pronunciation my mother paid so much money to fix. **insert sound byte of my mother on why she sent me to speech**
However, this concern for being afraid of how your child speaks and is perceived by the world is a concern for tons of people of color because of how the American school system has trained us to look down on those who don’t speak quote on quote, correctly. Who’s to say what is correct or not when schools here were originally founded by white people who colonized America. We can look back at Zitkala-Sa’s work titled American Indian Stories that illustrate her experience at the Carlisle School established by a Richard Henry Pratt who had the amazing idea to strip Native American students of their cultural identity both physically and emotionally through education.
**insert sound byte of expert/ professor on this history**
Jamila Lysicott is an assistant Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Research Fellow of Teachers College, Columbia University’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME).
**insert sound byte** 07:55- 08:38 from TED talk: Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color
The sense of fugitivity she mentions shouldn’t exist when a student speaks their “home” language at school.
**insert sound byte** 09:02- 09:23 from TED talk: Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color
This erasure was especially apparent in Zitkala-Sa’s experiences and unfortunately continues today.
TKE TKE TKE
Christina's WSC 110 Blog 