Banning slang in schools - what's the story behind the story?
November 21, 2013 7:44 PM Subscribe
What is your position on the use of dialect in schools? Will banning it really improve general literacy? What does it mean for the speakers of the local dialect? Will it affect how widely the local dialect is spoken or how people feel about it - will it change its status in the community? Will it improve the chances of the children economically, or does it just perpetuate class snobbery and elitism? Is the bad economy being used to more strictly curtail the speech and mannerisms of the poor? Why would that be in anyone's interest, linguistically?
There was an article in the Guardian recently about a headteacher in the Black Country banning the use of local dialect in school. He says he's seeing children coming up through nursery with no ''proper'' english and blaming that on a lack of conversations round the dinner table at home. This policy was also implemented in a Croydon school recently in a bid to ''improve speech''.
I only minored in linguistics in undergrad but my impression from that is that children from working class neighbourhoods were doing plenty of conversing with their families and were actually very good at it, but not at the kind of good-grade-getting standard english used in schools?
There was an article in the Guardian recently about a headteacher in the Black Country banning the use of local dialect in school. He says he's seeing children coming up through nursery with no ''proper'' english and blaming that on a lack of conversations round the dinner table at home. This policy was also implemented in a Croydon school recently in a bid to ''improve speech''.
I only minored in linguistics in undergrad but my impression from that is that children from working class neighbourhoods were doing plenty of conversing with their families and were actually very good at it, but not at the kind of good-grade-getting standard english used in schools?
This post was deleted for the following reason: This is pretty much chatfilter and not a problem to be solved. -- mathowie
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