beyond the pail

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

What's odd about this is why the teachers, who presumably are bucket folk too, are not making allowances for the children. The fact that teachers are often speak the same regional variety as their students probably accounts for why this kind of dialect discrimination is rarer than discrimination based on social dialects.

I'm sure the teaching standards for the state of Indiana include compentencies related to cultural and linguistic differences. I would encourage the parent to take it up with the school. Maybe you, Mai, could do an in-service presentation on language variation.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Mai Kuha [mailto:mkuha at BSU.EDU]
Sent:   Thu 3/6/2003 5:15 PM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:             Re: beyond the pail

Neither one--that's the point. I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer.
mk

> 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)
>