Sunday, September 9, 2012
Question
Mourdants' article was written in 2010. His last sentence reads 'By engaging in a concerted effort to steer students towards proficiency in SAE while continuing to value AAE, much progress can be made in the right direction." Has progress been made? Is Mourdants' stance on the acceptance of AAE to steer a student to bidialectalism a widely received one or is this issue still highly contested and argued over as it has been for years? Do schools and instructors receive the support to teach students with these goals in mind? Have the discouraging statistics listed in this article gotten any better or worse and if so why?
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Well Emma - I think probably there hasn't been a great deal of improvement in this regard as of yet, and certainly the statistics about drop out rates among minority and poor students remain as bleak as ever. These are hard trends to buck (impossible trends to buck one person at a time, and difficult even with a concerted communal effort) in part because the stigmas around language use are reflections of much greater stigmas around race and poverty. These are great questions, though - perfect starting points for a final project!
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