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

[Lynn Goldstein]

lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu on Sunday, September 12, 2004 at 10:46 AM
+0000 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.

>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
>
 I had the same reaction-- the focus was on developing early Spanish
literacy,the importance of which many lay people are wholly ignorant of.

Instead of just "aarghs" being limited to this list, those who wrote on
the list about the misconceptions might consider writing an op ed piece
and submitting it to the editor of the LA Times so as to reach lay people
and tell them what was right and what was wrong about this article.

Lynn Goldstein
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>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ignorant/outdated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
>>
>