teacher is both an authority figure and a role model and as such has
tremendous influence in a child’s life. What follows in this chapter is an
examination of the beliefs and practices of educators in so far as they
address language issues, and how language ideology affects goals in both
abstract and concrete ways. This is not a frontal attack on the crucial but
undervalued profession of teaching, but a consideration of how inequality
and disadvantage are perpetuated – for the most part unwittingly – in the
classroom.
There is a large body of work on the way teachers’ attitudes play out in
the classroom, and it is remarkably consistent in its findings. For example,
Briggs and Pailliotet (1997) undertook a study of education majors who
had had extensive coursework emphasizing process-based (rather than
error-based) evaluation of student work. In this study, the education
majors were asked to correct a number of essays but despite their training,
the subjects were highly consistent in attributing usage errors with student
carelessness, laziness, and incompetence. These findings supplemented
Briggs and Pailliotet’s own observations on the power of language
conventions, and provided some insight into “how grammatical instruction
remains a locus of power and control in English instruction at any level”
(ibid.: 1).^2 There is a crucial question without any clear answer: Most
teachers are aware of the power and control they have, but how many of
them realize how very influential their personal opinions are in student
success?^3 Ideology is indeed most powerful when it is least visible; the
invisibility of ideology also makes it much easier to propagate in a
classroom.
Language ideology in education is a multi-faceted and complex subject
that cannot be addressed by means of a handful of academic studies;
instead, I focus here on two specific angles: first, children who speak
stigmatized varieties of English (Appalachian English, British West Indian
English, Sea Islands Creole, Gullah, Mexicano English, Hawai’i Creole
English, among many others) and how they cope, or fail to cope. Second,
I’ll look briefly at the language spoken by the teachers themselves. When