While universities and colleges across the country are trying hard to
deal with the complicated issue of graduate student instructors who are not
native speakers of English, it seems that policies to address the question of
quality of classroom instruction have to take a broader view. Foreign
students need help in acclimating to a very different academic and social
culture, in a variety of matters. Language is of primary importance, and
deserves careful attention. In addition to the training of the foreign
students, it must be noted that our own students have to be educated about
matters of language and communication in the classroom, and be taught to
take a reasonable amount of responsibility for a successful educational
experience.
Summary
Educators have a difficult job. We want them to provide our children with
a great variety of skills, from reading and writing to job training.
Furthermore, we entrust them with teaching our children the basics of
good citizenship and responsible behavior as social and sexual beings; we
charge them with occupying and entertaining, even on occasion with
passing on parenting skills. On top of all these expectations, we want the
teacher to give our children that mythical perfect spoken language we call
*SAE, a language which is grammatically homogenous and accentless.
Whether or not the child can do anything constructive with that language
is in many instances secondary to the social construction of accent.
Teachers have responded to these expectations by developing authority
structures around language – written and spoken – which are projected as
absolute and inviolate. We trust their intuitions and whims above all
others. This authority is sometimes abused. Teachers are for the most part
firm believers in a standard language ideology which rejects or
marginalizes those varieties of U.S. English which are markedly non-
middle-class, middle American, and colorless. Arguments for this overt
limitation of discourse which affects huge numbers of children are usually
based in economics. If asked about a wider possible view, and policies of
acceptance, every teacher will point to the other institutions which support
and propagate a standard language ideology. Employers have expectations,
they will argue. There will be repercussions.