Robin,+9,+HALR+ch.+10,+Academic+Purpose

It is easy to champion our freedoms, our diversity, and to preserve our heritages because we feel strongly these beliefs are valuable and we want all the world to enjoy the freedoms and recognize the beauty of cultural plurality. However, I think sometimes in our heated desires, as we strive to make American education reflect our values, we wander a little too far from distinguishing our Academic values. I believe it would be useful, when we are attempting to view through a lens of education, to develop a generic mind-set and view students as students; as an educational whole, incorporating only distinctions that are academically relevant (explicitly special education, IDEIA and implicitly special accommodations, Section 504). Tenets of Democratic Core Values, embracing Cultural Diversity, and celebrating Individualism should be woven into the school and classroom context, however not at the expense of academic rigor. Our country has determined the purpose of public education for the benefit of our students is to prepare them to a certain level of proficiency (Core Standards). The aims are to improve our societal standards so people will be not become marginalized in their own country, so they can access opportunities of this democracy, to educate a rational citizenry able to wisely guide their families and their country and be competently and competitively equal should they choose to represent our country in the global community that determines our survival in democratic freedom.

Obviously, I agree with the statements (147, 148) that “A long-standing challenge…has been to provide…literacy skills they will need to excel in our rapidly changing society”, I believe all educational skills need to be provided to all students and I support the drive that “…school achievement require students to be more skilled than ever before”. M. Woodford (1997) makes an excellent observation that the “…plurality…of different people are essential for freedom and democracy” (148) and he states “…the importance of Standard American English is not contradictory to the democratic idea, for, mastery of SAE would help promote equal opportunity and improve the possibility of people to communicate across boundaries and borders” (148). And isn’t this what we want for people? Isn’t a country with a high standard of living preferable to the alternative and shouldn’t the gap between the wealthy and the impoverished be negligible? Woodford further notes that “Ideally, we must encourage space for both respect and acceptance of individual differences” (148), otherwise what would be the point of living in a society that was a mockery of democratic values and where freedom was perverted? That would not be a characteristic of an advanced society enjoying a high standard of living. But Woodford does not end his sentence there, he continues by saying “…as well as simultaneous movement toward the development of tools that allow communication among a wide variety of people in varying contexts” (148). Communication is two-way and absolutely essential. When you cannot make yourself understood, how will you meet your needs? There exist enough barriers to communication, people need to be able to effectively communicate for diplomacy, advocacy, and harmony in their personal relationships and in community participation.

Hi Robin,

I hear a good amount of passion in this response to chapter 10 in HALR, and I wanted to respond, because I share the same type of passion. I want to respond to your comments, and then expand my rationale. I see where your perspective has situated itself in regards to the quotes above, but I think there is more to be said. The author goes on to note, "One area of great need is research that distinguishes the differences in the needs of AAVE-speaking students who have learning disabilities, underachieving AAVE-speaking adolescents, and underserved students attending underresourced schools who have been denied access to excellent instruction by fully qualified teachers" The author goes on to articulate a study conducted by Fisher and Frey regarding teachers that focused on both reading and writing, and where and how the writings of most AAVE-speaking student's are neglected to be examined (148). This means that some teachers are neglecting a most invaluable tool in order to assess AAVE-speaking students ability to develop SAE, which is the way in which they know to write. In other words, AAVE-speaking students are fully capable of critically thinking, organizing, and articulating an argument, but because their cultural differences have made their aptitude for reading seemingly lower than the standard scale recognizes, their writing has been almost altogether ignored. This is problematic for our students, and us as instructors. We cannot attribute much weight to reading scores of AAVE-speaking students, as being underscored, when the other half of their ability to communicate is ignored. The writings of these students may not represent the highest example of skills that we want productive, American citizens to maintain, but it does illustrate that these students have something they are willing to communicate. It illustrates that, even though the communication may lack the type of mechanics SAE maintains, AAVE is a vernacular worthy of capturing, examining, and utilizing, so that we may harness it as a tool, to penetrate the wall that these speakers have built around themselves, in defense of those who want to bring it down altogether. We don't have to worry that our way of communicating in a democratic country is threatened in any way, just because we step outside of our comfort zones to use the so called, "threat" as a tool. Really what we're doing, when we attempt this, is knowing that we are lacking a lot of resources as instructors, as using anything we feel is helpful in offering our students the entire perspective and experience of living a literate, American lifestyle. Now, I'm not at all implying that you were saying this, I just figured I would play devils advocate for a minute, because in this scenario, it seems to advocate us as well.

Thanks! Dawn