Since Dec. 18, when the Oakland school board passed a muddled resolution to treat Ebonics as a second language, the quiet experiments of classrooms like Shavies’s have been lost under a swell of rhetoric. By unanimous decision, the board voted to recognize Ebonics as the “primary language” of many of its students, and to teach students in their primary language in order both to maintain the “legitimacy and richness” of the language and to help students master standard English. Describing Ebonics as “genetically based,” the resolution suggested that schools might seek federal funds earmarked for bilingual programs. What this meant for Oakland’s students was anybody’s guess. The board merely charged the superintendent to develop a program.
But for talking heads and holiday party- goers the board’s announcement, however vague, meant a chance to tee off. Who didn’t have an opinion? An America Online poll about Ebonics drew more responses than the one asking people whether O. J. Simpson was guilty. Jesse Jackson quickly lambasted the decision as “an unacceptable surrender borderlining on disgrace.” NAACP president Kweisi Mfume called it “a cruel joke.” California Gov. Pete Wilson vowed not to fund what his press secretary Sean Walsh called “a ridiculous theory” (an odd bit of posturing, since the state’s own SEP program, using black English, operates in about 300 schools). From Washington, Secretary of Education Richard Riley fired a pre-emptive strike, restating a Reagan-era policy that black English is a dialect, not a distinct language, and therefore not eligible for bilingual-education moneys.
“Ebonics,” first coined in 1973, refers to a grammatically consistent and rich African-American speech pattern with roots in West Africa. Key components include not conjugating the verb “to be” (“I be joking”) and dropping final consonants from words (“hand” becomes “han”). Linguists have long debated whether it constitutes a distinct language or a dialect, often dividing along ideological lines. A language, runs an adage, is merely a dialect with an army.
The Oakland school board was quick to take up the controversy. Black students form a slight majority in the district and have performed below every other group, eking out a 1.8 average on a scale of 4. Against this underachievement, the board has groped for solutions. In 1991 it rejected a state-approved social-studies textbook series as racist and simplistic. It launched an Afrocentric curriculum in one high school. It requires school uniforms for elementary- and junior-high-school students. The Ebonics resolution itself came with 18 pages of recommendations covering everything from hiring more black teachers to mentoring black males.
When the backlash came, the board hired a publicist and clarified–or hedged –its position. It did not intend to teach kids how to speak black English. Instead, it called for teachers to accept Ebonics as a native language and teach students to translate into standard English, rather than correct them for speaking wrongly. The board denied any intention to seek bilingual funds. And the phrase “genetically based,” according to a statement, referred to linguistic genesis, not racial DNA. Jesse Jackson then repositioned himself, telling NEWSWEEK the measure would help to “detect the problem without demeaning the students, and build a bridge to English proficiency.”
The board has some evidence on its side. Since the 1980s a small body of research has suggested that black students learn better when schools use Ebonics to teach standard English. A 1989 study of inner-city college students, for example, found that those who used texts contrasting Ebonics with standard English included fewer Ebonics constructions in their own writing than those who just studied standard English. “The limited data is all positive,” says Stanford linguistics professor John Rickford. “It’s clearly a shortcut process to standard English that works.”
But for a school system as troubled as Oakland’s, Ebonics seems a small corrective. “It’s like trying to put out a house fire with an eyedropper,” says linguist John McWhorter of the University of California. Some students are skeptical. “They’re afraid they would be taught in Ebonics, which would be insulting,” says Nicole Thompson, 18, a senior at Oakland Tech. Test scores at the Parker school remain among the lowest in the district. State authorities point to bigger problems in Oakland: crowded classrooms, dilapidated schools, too few computers and–until a strike last year–some of the lowest teachers’ salaries in the county. These deficiencies, which shadow low student performance around the country, don’t make the talk-show and holiday-party circuit. And there may lie the real shame– and much bigger challenge–of the Oakland school district. ^
