Russian and Portuguese, for example, face a different set of
institutionalized challenges. Bilingual education is an important – and
very large – topic that cannot be addressed in any depth here.
4 The U.S. Department of Education is the home of the NAEP (National
Assessment of Educational Progress) which is the “primary federal
entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education” (NAEP
website at: http://nces.ed.gov/)..) NAEP makes their raw data available
to other public and private organizations, one of which is the Annie E.
Casey Foundation. The NAEP uses a three-level assessment of
achievement levels, in which reading skills are ranked as basic,
proficient or advanced (http://tinyurl.com/4o35xco).
5 “Since 1949, the Conference on College Composition and
Communication (CCCC) has been the world’s largest professional
organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to
new media.” See http://www.ncte.org/cccc.
6 Smitherman (2003b) provides some insight into the evolution of this
resolution in her essay “The Historic Struggle for Language Rights in
the CCCC.”
7 There comes a point where the argument for a strictly standardized
written language will also collapse. In creative writing of all kinds, the
rules of the written standard are sacrificed for the sake of story.
8 Cameron (1995: 234–235) explores this unfortunate turn in linguistic
argument at length.
9 The issues that confront native speakers of AAVE in the classroom are
very similar to those of Hawai’i Creole English speakers. Outside of
Hawai’i, HC (Hawai’i Creole) does not evoke the same kind of strong
reactions that AAVE does, which makes it especially useful in trying to
grasp the issues discussed here.
10 Appropriacy arguments are not always inappropriate, and often quite
necessary when it comes to matters of public behavior. Children who
get into a fight on the playground hear words like inappropriate and
unacceptable.
11 See especially Labov’s “The Logic of Non-Standard English” (1972c),
which is purposefully polemic but also illustrates the inaccuracy of
Bernstein’s theories very clearly.
12 I am grateful to Mary Jean Habermann, Director of the Bilingual
Multicultural Education Unit of the New Mexico Department of
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