African American Vernacular English
On Integration of the Dialect into the Classroom

Introduction: A Tendency to Be “Right”

It is rare that people agree on anything. People argue over any random topic from coffee to languagewhich is better, richer, superior even. In either case people even disagree on the evidence presented. Or refuse to look at the evidence. We are an empirical species in that we make judgments based on our experience with the world. And at times, empiricism has led people to prefer to stick to their guns regardless of possible so-called evidence. In a senseempiricism can lead us to avoid empiricism. We all speak differently. Some people claim to speak “better” than others. Language is incredibly diverse and subject to change. Language is an elaborate cognitive system by which we relay information between one another. But because it is such an abstract and moldable ability, there are many different possible examples of it. No one way of using language, or dialect thereof, is superior. Such bold claims are comparable to declaring that a hot cup of strong black coffee is better than a cappuccino or vice versa. Language is used to get a point across to another person. Does it really matter how you state your order, as long as you get your coffee? Of course, politeness constitutes a whole other problem of agreement, but beyond that, the “may I,” “can I,” and “lemme git dat,” will all likely succeed in the case of attaining coffee. If you spoke a completely different language, however, you might run into some problems. Trying to order a caf mocha in a foreign language might be successful with some hand gestures, but you would be assured a caffeine-filled prize should you happen to speak a dialect of the other speaker’s language. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of Standard American English (SAE), because it is “a variety of a language defined by both geographical factors and social factors, such as class, religion, and ethnicity. (LF 521)” While this seems clear enough, these very boundaries of class and ethnicity help perpetuate the notion that AAVE is the speech of an uneducated people. The speakers of AAVE can be just as eloquent as speakers of SAE. AAVE, also known as Ebonics is an innovative dialect of American English, which arose from one of the most rampant acts of enslavements and segregation in human history. Due to the fact that this dialect is unfortunately tainted with the ghosts of American history, xenophobia perpetuates the fear of more than different skin color, and AAVE is being kept out of classrooms that would benefit from integration.
Acknowledgement
Classrooms across the United States are teaching in SAE, even in classrooms with majorities of AAVE speakers. Whether children know it or not, they apply rules to their speech. Every utterance is governed by their innate ability to acquire and use language. It would be wiser if we, as educators, point out the rules they are already using rather than skipping straight to the rules of a dialect they don’t know yet. Common sense should make this deduction, yet common sense remains mutable. If you wanted to teach a frog how to jump like a kangaroo, would you not first explain to the frog that he could already jump? (I realize that communication is relatively limited to humans, but the simile works). We must acknowledge that these young speakers of AAVE are already speaking, not in a superior or inferior way, but successfully using language. Moving onto SAE will be easier once the AAVE speakers realize that they are already on the right track.
In 1997 the Oakland School Board released a resolution that recognized Ebonics as a dialect of SAE. Because over half of Oakland’s school district population spoke AAVE, the school board recommended incorporation into the classrooms. This resolution, however, was met with hot debate. Because of the adeptness of language acquisition unique to children, there is no better time to expose them to other dialects in their environment. Children have a fleeting opportunity to easily become bidialectal or bilingual, “this critical period appears to extend from birth to approximately puberty” (LF 285). But many of the main misconceptions surrounding this debate can be attributed to the misunderstanding of how the Oakland Board of Education wanted to incorporate Ebonics into the school system. Many thought that the board of education wanted to make Ebonics an official language to justify that it would be their primary language in and outside of their homes. The actual intention was to create a bridge between Ebonics and SAE understanding.
Integrating AAVE into the classroom and respecting the dialect and its speakers “will encourage students’ participation, motivation, and the realization that school and literacy are not the antithesis to their home language and identity. (Orr 29)” It is school after all, and we do seem to agree that we send children there to learn.
Language evolves much as animals do. There is little one can do to control this evolution as there are so many variables involved. The language that you speak is by no means the first, last, best or worst language. What you speak is a result of tens of thousands of years of linguistic flux. Long ago a conquering power may have forced your ancestors to start learning a new language. And to be sure, your language changed on its ownsimply over time. Look at the text of Stephen King compared with Chaucerboth written in English. If we can admit that there are other dialects of the same language, why is it so difficult to see the benefit of integrating AAVE into schools where many speak in this dialect? There are several factors involved with this problem.

What is Keeping AAVE Out of the Classroom?
Some argue of the issue of funding. But funding should not be required for a philosophical change. Or rather, an application of reason in our thoughtwhich typically meets the criteria for thought in the first place. Do we want our children to learn? Yes. Do we agree that teaching AAVE to speakers of AAVE before teaching them SAE will increase their chances of learning? Well, the studies prove so, so yes. What is the holdup? Beyond funding issues, there is also the complicated matter xenophobia.
I say xenophobia rather than racism because racism itself fits into the category of xenophobia. The least racist person might still be known to utter “But they just sound so stupid,” and not be referring to a racial group. It seems our lot as humans to be afraid of the unknown and at times even afraid of the very process of finding out.
The mere existence of a group called the English Only Movement (EOM) is evidence that there are significant strides to take in the realm of listening to reason when it comes to language. The EOM strives to beat out all bilingualism of the states, even all “deviations” of SAE. Consider the implications of a government refusing to communicate with a large portion of its nation. Donna Jo Napoli, in her book Language Matters, points out that this would obviously infringe on our rights. Imagine trying to vote if the ballot was incomprehensible. The EOM is inadvertently attempting to limit the “agreed-upon” rights of others in this country. The United States of America was founded by speakers of foreign languages and is comprised of citizens from around the globe. Napoli goes on to compare language with other cultural habits, food for example. Can you imagine a group trying to pass an initiative to ban Mexican restaurants? It seems the EOM is not seeing the big picture, it was circumstance not virtue that led SAE to be the so-called “standardized” form of English in the United States. It would only be a disservice to others to enforce a monolingual society. But the EOM are not the only ones against this idea of AAVE classroom integration.
Even many African Americans “were afraid that teaching in Ebonics would exaggerate racial linguistic prejudice rather than redress it” (Napoli 115). Some African American leaders, like Maya Angelou “mistakenly thought that the aim was to teach Ebonics and not Standard English” (308 Rickford). Further, some fear that if we start with AAVE in the schools, what will be next? I imagine some of them envisioning a future in which all of the street signs are written in every languagea simple stop sign would don a tome of linguistic “stop” equivalents. But this was not the intention of the Oakland Board of Education’s Resolution. The idea is to simply start off with the dialect, use old fashioned psychology to “reward” the AAVE speakers by acknowledging their correct speech, and then move on to SAE. Ebonics would not be the sole medium of education; in fact, a bidialectal reading program could even be optional. Let the results speak for themselves.
I do not believe that I have to go into the history of African Americans here. I’m fairly certain that you know that most of them did not choose to come to America. True, civil rights have come a long way, but women’s sudden ability to vote in 1920 did not equalize their status with men overnight. The hard earned right to for African Americans to vote, sit in the front or back of the bus and drink from the same water fountains as whites did not bring the Civil Rights Movement to completion.
It seems as if the public’s xenophobia and failure to see logic has blighted the progressive thought. If we integrate AAVE into the classrooms, what next? What about all of the other students? What of Punjabi, German, Spanish, and Ukrainian in the classrooms? All of these children are at risk of backward philosophies with roots in racism like the EOM. Because of such thought “California’s 1998 Anti-Bilingual Education Initiative (Proposition 227) passed by 61% to 39% plac[ing] over 500,000 students lacking English proficiency in mainstream, English-only classrooms to fend for themselves” (Hartman 16). But what are the schools for? We cannot refuse to take the next step for fear that there will be more steps to take in the future. This is no method for progress.

Evidence does not Always Yield Acceptance
In 1981 Simpkins and Simpkins conducted a cross-cultural reading program called Bridges. The hypothesis was that if a reading program started by presenting children with reading materials that were in their own dialect (AAVE in this case), that the teachers could successfully move from AAVE reading materials to a mixture of AAVE and SAE, and then eventually to SAE. Acknowledging that the children were already speaking a verifiable dialect would help bridge the gap between AAVE and SAE. As a direct result of the Bridges Program, with over 500 children in the study, students improved more than three times faster than the children in the control group. Measuring progress in terms of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in Reading Comprehension, the children improved “6.2 months for four months of instruction compared to only 1.6 of instruction for the students in their regular scheduled classroom reading activities” Rickford 308). Unfortunately, as Rickford points out in African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications, the funding dropped out and the Bridges Program, however promising the results, lost its steam. The loss of funding ties directly to the attitudes on AAVEthat is to sayis AAVE slang or a dialect of English? Proving it did not seem to matter.
Believe it or not, there are people out there who manage to make claims without proper evidence. For instance, my best friend’s xenophobic uncle once crashed his car into another man’s car, and proceeded to yell at the poor man (who was Cambodian American): “We showed you at Pearl Harbor!” This is a great example of a claim that is devoid of reasonCambodia was our ally at the time, and we didn’t “show” anybody anything at Pearl Harbor. My very own grandfather used to say, “damn foreigners” whenever he saw someone with even the slightest of dark skin. He had emigrated from Canadahe was a “damn” foreigner. Yes, xenophobia plays its ignorant hand in this game as well.
This lack of aptitude for grasping evidence is reminiscent of Copernicus’ strife. One can use science to thoroughly prove every aspect of a given point and still fail to sway others. This martyrdom of the singular voice of reason is a recurrent human problem. The integration of AAVE into classrooms that would benefit from it, will simply take more time. More studies must be conducted, more proof, even if it is the same proof must be presented again. And again.

Work Cited:

Hartman, Andrew. Language as Oppression: The English-Only Movement in the United States. May/June 2005. Poverty and Race Research Action Council. December 13, 2006.

Napoli, Donna Jo. Language Matters.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2003.

Orr, Evelyn J. Linguistic Perspectives on African American Vernacular English and Implications for the Language Arts Classroom. August 2000. Stanford University. November 19, 2006

Rickford, John R. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications. Blackwell Publishers. 1999.

Simpkins, G., G. Holt, and C. Simpkins. 1977.
Bridge: A Cross-Cultural Reading Program.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Tserdanelis, Georgios Wong, Wai Yi Peggy, eds.
Language Files Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics. 9th ed. Columbus: The Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 2004.