Aaaargh, again. (Program enlists Santa Ana parents as 'first teachers')

[Aurolyn Luykx]

To be fair, the program DID sound like a good one, as
far as the L1 literacy support that it's giving the
kids (which is the most important part). The "aargh"
was just for all the embedded misconceptions in the
article, such as the confusion between literacy and
language and the assumption that low-income folks are
linguistic neanderthals. I often find out-and-out
linguistic prejudice less annoying than when the same
attitudes are wrapped in nice liberal ideals.
A.L.


--- "Harold F. Schiffman"
<haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:

> I'm wondering if I've missed something. I thought
> that the point of this
> Santa Ana program was to get early literacy going in
> Spanish, as a way to
> counteract replacive bilingualism (or at lest
> replacive biliteracy) to
> take over once these children got to school.  I
> thought there was good
> evidence since the 1960s' when Hauser (I think)
> talked about "the build-in
> curriculum in the middle-class home" and Head Start
> programs got going.
>
> We certainly have evidence that children with no
> reinforcement for their
> literacy in their mother tongue never develop it,
> and may also never
> develop very good literacy skills in the dominant
> language, either. My
> wife teaches remedial reading/writing in a high
> school in Camden NJ (one
> of the poorest cities in New Jersey, if not the
> whole US) and she
> regularly gets students (in 9th grade) who read at a
> 4th grade level. Many
> are from Hispanic backgrounds, and most have no
> literacy skills in
> Spanish. She tries to (subversively, it turns out)
> get them to realize
> they can probably read Spanish with some help, but
> it's clear to me , at
> least, that if they had some introduction like this
> Santa Ana program,
> they might have better skills. And research tells us
> (I thought) that
> these skills are transferable, so skills in Spanish
> should enhance skills
> in English.  (Or am I still missing something?)
> And, literacy in Spanish
> should help those children resist replacive
> bilingualism, and language
> shift to the dominant language.
>
> Journalists typically misunderstand these issues,
> and may misrepresent
> them.  (One of the goals of the establishment of the
> Consortium for
> Language Policy and Planning was to have summer
> institutes where we could
> present these issues to journalists, legislators,
> school principals, etc.
> "The objectives of the Consortium are to enhance the
> quality of research,
> teaching, and information dissemination on the
> subject of language policy
> formation and study; to strengthen
> similarly-oriented programs of its
> member institutions, and to foster dialogue on the
> process of language
> policy formation in situations of ethnic and
> linguistic conflict in the
> modern world. [...] In particular, the Consortium
> for Language Policy and
> Planning will have as a primary focus projects that
> are educational and
> informational--the Consortium will sponsor
> workshops, summer institutes,
> informational and short-courses designed to bring to
> public discussion
> issues affecting schools and other multilingual
> sites of contention in
> contemporary America and other parts of the world.")
>
> I have been unsuccessful in getting funding for such
> programs, but it's
> still a good idea, and I hope Rachel has some
> success with her idea.
>
> But tell me what's wrong with the general thrust of
> the Santa Ana program
> (ignoring misconcptions about language "deficits"
> and all that.)
>
> Hal Schiffman
>
>
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Rachel R. Reynolds wrote:
>
> > Hi Everyone.
> >
> > Reading these two "Aaaaargh" threads about
> linguistically ignorant/outdated
> > journalists with baited breathe (my most hated, by
> the way, is the
> > literacy/orality divide).  I'm in a department
> that has a very large
> > program in Communication that trains journalism
> majors, to whom I teach
> > Intro to Sociolinguistics and an upper level
> Intercultural Communication
> > class.  We're thinking of revamping the program to
> better train our
> > students to cope with the decline of a real
> research-basis in journalistic
> > reporting.  So all of your comments on this thread
> are making me realize I
> > have a tangible opportunity to develop a course
> called something like
> > "Linguistics for Journalists" that would not only
> include some basic recent
> > research on major issues that come up again and
> again in the press, but
> > also some ideas for budding reporters about how to
> network with reliable
> > scholars to stay current.  If any of you have:  a)
> ideas for syllabi
> > including readings, and/or b) comments on this
> enterprise in general, I'd
> > love to hear from you.  On or off list...
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Rachel Reynolds
> > Drexel University
> >
> > At 07:01 PM 9/10/2004 -0400, you wrote:
> > >At 12:39 PM -0700 9/10/04, Aurolyn Luykx wrote:
> > >
> > >>Is anyone else out there suspicious of articles
> that cite that old study
> > >>about low-income parents speaking on average 300
> fewer words per hour to
> > >>their children?...
> > >
> > >And even if they do, what does it really mean?
> Don't we have ethnographic
> > >evidence of normal language development among
> children who are hardly
> > >*spoken to* at all, until they themselves have
> begun to talk well enough
> > >to be considered worthy conversational partners?
> > >
> > >>Maybe we need a program whereby linguists go
> into the homes of
> > >>journalists to educate THEM.
> > >
> > >What we really need is programs that teach
> linguistics in schools. I mean,
> > >we don't teach 19th-century biology, do we
> (unless we happen to be in
> > >Texas)? Why do we still (apparently) teach
> 19th-century ideas about language?
> > >
> > >Ron
> >
>
>



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail