The Impact of Linguistic Bias in Education

[Music]

let’s

talk about the impact of linguistic bias

on education we as educators like to

talk about how

linguistic difference or language

difference is a strength

in the classroom but i asked the

question

do we really treat it that way

in the classroom setting when someone

uses a different language or a different

linguistic

difference do we really treat it as a

strength or do we treat it like an error

so i like to talk about african-american

vernacular english

or ave as i like to call it for the

acronym aave

so help me make that stick ah they i

like to call it

when we look at ave though do we really

use that or we talk about that as a

strength

or do we talk about that as a deficit

arguably

ave is the most researched

dialect in america and yet it still is

the least respected

this is my daughter sophia i love this

picture of her

she looks like she’s running for office

she’s in third grade here in this

picture

and she had some experiences with this

in her classroom

as many teachers do many educators do

they’ll put these sentences on the board

and say

fix these sentences these sentences are

wrong can you make them correct

so she had these sentences on her paper

and one of them said mrs johnson be

organizing

the fall festival well sophia being my

daughter

and knowing all about ave quickly

crossed that out

and wrote ave in the margin

raised her hand for the teacher and said

um excuse me there’s nothing wrong with

this sentence

this sentence is written in ave and my

mama said

this is important to black people and

black culture and this is how we talk

and i think you might be racist

that’s what she said now at the exact

same time interestingly enough

i was working as a speech language

pathologist

in an urban education setting

and i was starting to have some of these

same experiences

where educators were referring students

to me

black students who spoke ave

and they kept asking me can you please

evaluate this child

he doesn’t speak right he needs to talk

better you need to fix this he’s now not

writing right you need to fix him

and so i said no this is a dialectal

difference and

as a speech language pathologist i don’t

work on

dialectal differences only disorder this

is not a disorder

the educators kept insisting of course

that it was

and i started to do some research on

this because it became really

fascinating to me

and i learned that black students in

america

are two and a half times more likely to

receive special education services

mostly for learning disabilities

or speech language services or

behavioral disorder

two and a half more times more likely

than white students to receive special

education services i was concerned by

this

so instead of calling these children

disordered

i started educating the staff and i

started

educating families and students if they

were old enough

about dialectal difference as it

compares to mainstream american english

because mainstream american english is

what the school system

deems as correct or normal

even if someone outside of that dialect

speaks a different dialect

so i started educating the staff started

educating students

and families about ave

and i taught them that ave has cultural

significance in black communities

linguists have already shown that

language structure in ave is very

very similar to what you find in west

africa

why is that you might ask right because

when africans were captured

and then trafficked here to america and

enslaved

they didn’t know english they didn’t

speak the language

so they took what they knew about

language superimposed it onto

southern american english and ave was

born so that has now persisted

over the years over the centuries into

what we now call ave

it has its own phonological system it

has its own semantic system

syntax grammar and it’s all consistent

with languages spoken in west africa

so i watch a lot of tv okay i love to

critique

tv and movies it’s one of my favorite

pastimes so i started noticing some of

these nuances

in some of the television shows that are

presented today on on television

and one of them being not all ave

speakers

are black and not all black people speak

ave

i think the the tv show blackish does a

really good job of

exemplifying that and so does shameless

it really does a good job

in helping me explain to other

the students in particular where some of

these nuances come from

you talk like who you’re around

characters in

shameless in particular it’s a white

family living on the south side of

chicago in a predominantly black

neighborhood

so a lot of them speak ave

there’s this one episode within in

shameless where one of the characters is

talking to his black friends and he’s

speaking in ave

and there’s this brilliant translation

at the bottom of the screen in

mainstream american english

to exemplify for those who can’t follow

the conversation

here’s what they’re saying in your

language i thought that was brilliant

so i’ve kind of picked up on that and

i’ve started doing that when i talk to

other people

namely other educators or other families

and students about ave

so let’s do a little bit of that here

right now

so here’s an example i’m going to give

you three rules related to ave because

there’s a bunch of them y’all

but i’m going to give you three today

i’m going to pick on the to be verb

because

many people pick on the to be verb so

i’m going to go ahead and exemplify for

you

how ave has linguistic rules and it has

a system

and it has meaning so in ave

if you in drop the to be verb in a

sentence

it means something is happening right

now so

in the sentence he calling me on my cell

phone

that means my phone is ringing right now

and he’s calling me on my cell phone

right now

so that’s an example two sentences in

the

that mean the exact same thing on your

board in two

different dialects two different

sentences i mean the same thing in two

different dialects here’s another one

when you insert the to be verb in a

sentence in ave

it means something is happening all the

time so if i said he’d be calling me on

my cell phone that means

he calls me on my cell phone all the

time

okay obvi speakers just know that we

know what that means

okay so that’s two different sentences

on your board

one written in navi one written in

mainstream american english but they

mean the exact

same thing here’s the last one

ben if i put ben in a sentence i know

that means for a long

long time so he been calling me on my

cell phone means

that he’s been calling me on my cell

phone for a long time

so i know that as an obvious speaker

these

words have meaning these words have

value so he calling me on my cell phone

he’d be calling me on my cell phone he’d

been calling me on my cell phone

all mean different things okay they do

not mean the same thing

and you can directly translate that into

mainstream american english

it’s no different than any other dialect

guys all dialects have rules

think about the bostonians who drop

their r’s regularly

just an example example for you it’s

completely normal in boston right

i can’t move to boston and say they’re

all speaking wrong

no that’s how they speak you talk like

who you’re around so if they say pack

the cat

we know in chicago we wouldn’t say it

quite that way we’d say park the car

but those two sentences mean the exact

same thing it’s two different dialects

that mean the exact same thing

where you live dictates how you’re going

to talk

you talk like who you’re around that’s

all dialects are so if i have a

community and i was working in a

community

where the families there spoke

exclusively ave it should

be no surprise that the kids are going

to speak ave at school

how do we honor that though i

say to honor it in similar ways i just

showed you where i’m showing those

direct translations

for the sake of the students these are

my parents

and they they taught me how to code

switch

they both have master’s degrees in

education

and they showed me we spoke ave at home

and then when we got out to the to

public we would speak

in mainstream american english that’s

just the way it was done

not everyone has my experience though

you listen to me and you think well

you’re doing it

yeah but not everyone has my experience

i challenge you to consider

that there are students that i served

that were had only access to ave they

didn’t have access to mainstream

american english the way that i did

therefore my relationship with

co-switching is a little different

now that’s me and my husband we

in our family use more of a code meshing

model i speak ave i speak mainstream

american english

my husband’s from texas so he brings in

some southern american english

and we speak all of them at home

we speak all of them i speak them at

work

i’m doing some of it right now so i like

to blend

all of my dialects together because i

have value

and honor for all of these different

dialects

so i encourage others to do the same in

education

find out what language what dialect

your students are speaking and find

value in that as well

you remember my daughter sophia who

experienced

ave as being deemed as wrong in her

classroom and she had strong words about

that

what you don’t know though is that that

teacher

called me she called me from work she

called me at work while i was at work

and she was so at work

to tell me what had just happened

and she said the whole class got an

education on ave

and it’s cultural significance from my

daughter

the teacher said she took pause and

thought i’ve

never thought of it that way i’ve never

thought of ave as anything else

other than wrong now mind you this

teacher happens to be black

like me so she was very excited

to consider this isn’t wrong

it’s just a dialectal difference and she

went to her library there at the school

grabbed some books that were written in

ave

and she read them for the students to

exemplify its own significance as well

and she said to me from here on

out i will do better i will do my best

to make sure that i am differentiating

between

what is a deficit

and what is simply a difference because

they are not

the same thing and that is really all i

ask

because that is a really great place to

start

thank you