beyond the pail

[Sally Donlon]

What is nonstandard in this instance: pail or bucket? I don't quite get it.

sally



Mai Kuha wrote:

> Today a student in my class mentioned that her children lose points on
> schoolwork because one vocabulary item that keeps coming up on tests and in
> other teaching materials is "pail", and the word the children know,
> "bucket", is marked as wrong. Of course we are all aware that it's been
> established that the educational system's reaction to nonstandard linguistic
> features sometimes doesn't fit the stated goals of testing, but this is the
> first time I've heard of discrimination on the basis of *regional* features.
> Does this happen often? If so, should we (or someone else) try to do
> something about it?
>
> -Mai (in Muncie, IN)