Creoles
Three articles dealing with pidgins and creoles and education appeared in recent issues of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (JMMD). The first, “The politics of Creole language education in Jamaica: 1891-1921 and the 1990s” by Lena McCourtie (Vol.19, no.2, 1998, pp.108-27), focuses on the unique pedagogical situation in Jamaica but typical of other creole-speaking countries, where teaching falls somewhere between mother tongue and foreign language education. Part I of the study examines archival and historical data from Jamaica’s colonial period which reveals systematic failure of students to acquire English in elementary schools. Part II reports on a study conducted by the author in post-colonial Jamaica which found a similar cycle of underachievement in secondary schools. Although education policies since independence have aimed to empower Creole speakers, in practice, the majority of school leavers remain an “undereducated underclass”. The author suggests that this is due in part to teachers being poorly equipped to deal with the complex situation found in Creole-speaking countries. Several studies funded by the World Bank have looked at the problem and made recommendations for reform. One way forward is summarised in this directive from a 1992 report: “Pupils entering school are usually fluent Creole speakers moving to English as a target language. The resources of both languages must be utilised in the learning process” (pp.123-4).

The second article in JMMD concerns the language situation in the South pacific country of Vanuatu: “Double trouble, and three is a crowd: Languages in education and official languages in Vanuatu” by Robert Early (Vol.20, No.1, 1999, pp.13-33). According to Vanuatu’s constitution, Bislama (the local dialect of Melanesian Pidgin) is the national language and one of three official languages, along with English and French. However, only English and French are designated as principal languages of education. The constitution also guarantees protection of the 105 vernacular Oceanic languages spoken in the country and requires that the Ombudsman report to Parliament every year on “the observance of multilingualism” and “the measures likely to ensure its respect” (p.13). This article critically responds to the Ombudsman’s reports of 1995-1997, as summarized in the abstract (p.13):
Various deficiencies are claimed, including the definition of multilingualism, the bias towards French, the misunderstanding of language equity, and the misinterpretation of the Ombudsman’s role in language matters. Crucially, the reports fail to acknowledge the complexities of the post-colonial language situation in Vanuatu, and disdain both the important unifying role of Bislama as the national language and the diverse linguistic and cultural base provided by the multiple vernaculars

The third article in JMMD is “Challenges for multicultural education: Sociolinguistic parallels between African American English and Haitian Creole” by Flore Zéphir (Vol.20, No.2, 1999, pp.134-54). It starts out by discussing the concept of multicultural education in general, characterizing it as a form of “critical pedagogy” whose purpose is “to contest the established historical order, the traditional curriculum and teaching practices in schools, by rejecting racism and other forms of discrimination in schools and society” (p.137). Then the author describes language issues in multicultural education, showing that despite the recognized positive effects of native language instruction on academic achievement, Black vernaculars have been marginalized in American education. This has led to high failure rates among both African Americans and Haitian immigrants. She notes that “using African American English as a pedagogical tool enhances the changes of academic success for speakers of this variety” and wonders “why, at a time when multicultural education appears to be the prevalent educational model, African American English, unlike Chinese or Spanish, still has to wage a legitimacy battle” (p.146). In the Haitian community, several organizations as well as parents and students have filed a class action civil rights lawsuit against the New York City Board of Education, several local communities, and the State of New York, demanding quality bilingual education programs using Haitian Creole. The author calls for equality and justice for all through curricular reform in the education system by allowing Black vernaculars into the classroom.

Minority dialects
In 1996, the Oakland School Board resolved to use African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Ebonics in education to help African American students acquire standard English. This sparked a great deal of controversy in the USA, and the debate is still going on three years later. Several books have appear which are relevant to this controversy.

The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children is a collection of essays, interviews and other materials edited by Theresa Perry and Lisa Delpit (Beacon Press, Boston, 1998). The book has five parts. Part 1, INTRODUCTIONS, has two essays: “I ’on know why they be trippin’: Reflections on the Ebonics debate” by Theresa Perry and “What should teachers do? Ebonics and culturally responsive instruction” by Lisa Delpit. Part 2, WHAT IS EBONICS?, contains essays by Geneva Smitherman, Wayne O’Neil, Ernie Smith, James Baldwin and Mary Rhodes Hoover, plus an interview with John Rickford. Part 3 is about Classroom implications, containing interviews with Oakland teachers Carrie Secret (“Embracing Ebonics and teaching standard English”) and Hafeezah AdamaDavia Dalji (“Listen to your students”). It also has contributions by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Terry Meier, Mary Rhodes Hoover and Monique Brinson, about the use of literature, testing and other matters.

The Ebonics Resolution itself is the topic of Part 4. The texts of the original resolution and revisions are given as well as the Oakland policy statement and recommendations of the Task Force on Educating African-American students. The Standard English Proficiency Program is described. Also included are a response to critics of the Ebonics policy by the Oakland superintendent of schools, Carolyn Getridge; the Linguistics Society of America resolution on Ebonics; a piece by Geneva Smitherman; an interview with Oakland School Board member, Toni Cook; a piece by an Oakland student, Michael Lampkins; and an interview with activist Isaac Taggert about Ebonics and the role of community. Part 5 consists of personal essays by Joyce Hope Scott and Beverly Jean Smith.

The book also contains a useful list of resources on Ebonics, a section “Clarifying terminology”, and detailed notes and references.

African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications by John R. Rickford (Blackwell, Malden MA, 1999) is a collection of the author’s writings on AAVE. Part III, Educational Implications, has four chapters. The first, (Chapter 13), “Attitudes towards AAVE, and classroom implications and strategies” (pp.283-89) discusses the importance of educators being aware of the attitudes toward AAVE held by students, parents, employers and other teachers. These affect both expectations, the decision teachers must make about whether or how to use AAVE in their teaching. The chapter outlines the results of many studies, many showing predictably negative attitudes, but others surprisingly positive. Some preliminary remarks are made about specific teaching methods and strategies, such as using contrastive analysis, which are expanded upon in later chapters.

The next chapter, “Unequal partnership: Sociolinguistics and the African American speech community” (pp.290-319), was originally published in Language in Society in 1997, and is discussed in the PACE Newsletter no.8, p.15.

“Suite of ebony and phonics” (pp.321-28) shows that there are more positive attitudes towards AAVE than were reported in the media during the Oakland Ebonics controversy in 1996, and that AAVE is more systematic and has a longer history than usually assumed. The chapter also notes the educational implications of the scientific study of AAVE – in particular the value of the contrastive approach which the Oakland School Board was advocating.

Finally, Chapter 16, “Using the vernacular to teach the standard” (pp.329-47), details the devastating rate of failure in schools among African Americans, and considers possible language and non-language factors. It goes on to discuss how AAVE could be taken into account when teaching language arts. Three approaches are described: the linguistically informed approach, contrastive analysis and introducing reading in the vernacular (using “dialect readers”). Rickford concludes:
I would argue that to continue with traditional approaches in light of their dramatic failure rates, and to ignore innovative methods of taking the vernacular into account, despite their success and promise, represents an unconditional surrender, bordering on disgrace.

Another important book about AAVE and education in the wake of the Ebonics debate is Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement among African Americans edited by Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian and Orlando Taylor (Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems, McHenry IL, 1999). This is the proceedings of the Coalition on Language Diversity in Education, held in January, 1998. (See PACE Newsletter no.9, pp.11-12.) The book has nine chapters and an appendix, each of which is important reading for educators:
Chapter 1: Language diversity and academic achievement in the education of African American students–An overview of the issues (John R. Rickford)
Chapter 2: The language of African American students in classroom discourse (Courtney B. Cazden)
Chapter 3: Enhancing bidialectalism in urban African American students (Kelli Harris-Wright)
Chapter 4: Repercussions from the Oakland Ebonics controversy – The critical role of dialect awareness programs (Walt Wolfram)
Chapter 5: Considerations in preparing teachers for linguistic diversity (John Baugh)
Chapter 6: The case for Ebonics as part of exemplary teacher preparation (Terry Meier)
Chapter 7: Language policy and classroom practices (Geneva Smitherman)
Chapter 8: Language diversity, and assessment – Ideology, professional practice, and the achievement gap (Asa G. Hilliard, III)
Chapter 9: Lessons learned from the Ebonics controversy – Implications for language assessment (Anna F. Vaughn-Cooke)
Appendix: Testimony of Orlando L. Taylor on the subject of “Ebonics”

A dissenting point of view with regard to the role of AAVE in the classroom comes from John McWhorter in his book The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable about American English (Plenum Trade, New York and London, 1998). Chapter 8 of the book (pp.201-61) is entitled “Dialect in the headlines – Black English in the classroom?”. According to the author, the differences between AAVE and standard English are too minor to warrant the use of dialect readers or contrastive analysis in a “bridging” approach. Most African American children already know some standard English and can code-switch to and from AAVE with relative ease. He ascribes the failure of African American students not to differences between AAVE and standard English but to three main causes: the decline in quality in the American education system; the socioeconomic disparity between blacks and whites, especially in inner-city areas; and a “less fundamental orientation toward education” among many African American students than among other groups (p.228).

McWhorter presents five recommendations that linguists could make to help African American students in educations. These are:
1. Train schoolteachers in the systematicity of Black English (p.236).
2. Institute Afrocentric curricula at predominantly African American schools (p.239).
3. Allow young African American students to speak in their home dialect in class (p.248).
4. Teach African American children to read in standard English (p.251).
5. Only older students should be taught to “translate” into standard English in writing, as a remedial approach (p.252).

Moving on to Australia, Towards More User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English is the report of a research project conducted in 1996-7. The authors are Ian Malcolm, Yvonne Haig, Patricia Königsberg, Judith Rochecouste, Glenys Collard, Alison Hill and Rosemary Cahill. The report was published in 1999 in Mr Lawley (WA) by the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research at Edith Cowan University and the Education Department of Western Australia.
The project set out to gain greater understanding about Aboriginal English (AE) and how it differs from standard Australian English. The ultimate goal is to be able to use this understanding to facilitate a more accessible (or “user friendly”) education for AE-speaking students in primary and secondary schools. It concentrated on the following previously under-researched areas of AE: semantic fields, functions of language use in relation to form, genres, particular registers and codes. It also aimed to relate Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge to the following areas: curriculum, student outcome statements and pedagogical strategies to support two-way learning. (See the description of Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-way Education by Ian G. Malcolm (Edith Cowan University, 1995) in the PACE Newsletter no.8, 1997, p.14.)

The project was carried out by two groups of researchers: a “base team” made up of linguists, educational administrators and research assistants, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, based in Perth; and a “field team”, made up of 6 Aboriginal and Islander Education Workers, each linked with a cooperating teacher, at 6 state schools around Western Australia. Members of the field team gathered tape recordings of AE discourse which was transcribed and analysed by members of the base team. Both teams got together for 4 week-long live-in workshops. These resulted in “mutual awareness raising” on the part of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants and enabled them to develop joint interpretations of the data. They discussed the implications of the linguistic findings to two-way learning and established strategies for developing curriculum and pedagogical approaches (p.v).

The project demonstrated the following (p.vi):
a) AE as used by the children and adults studied differs systematically from standard English with respect to its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse and pragmatic functions.
b) The differences in semantics suggest significant underlying cognitive differences, as exhibited in different prototypes, schemas, taxonomies and patterns of polysemy and metaphor.
c) The distinctiveness of AE is already at the level of awareness of many of the adults and children studied and strategic use is made by them of a bidialectal repertoire.
d) Bidialectal research, curriculum development and pedagogical innovation are achievable on the basis of cooperative involvement of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal personnel on an equal basis.
e) The principle of open investigation of dialectal difference across cultural groups has significant application to academic research, to two-way pedagogy and to professional development.

Resources for teachers:
Teaching materials have been published for an acclaimed Los Angeles program: English for Your Success: A Language Development Program for African American Children Grades Pre-K-8 by the Los Angeles Unified School District and Noma LeMoine (Peoples Publishing, Maywood NJ, 1999). The teachers’ guide is titled A Handbook of Successful Strategies for Educators. It contains chapters on normal language development in children, the historical development and characteristic features of African American Language (AAL) [i.e. AAVE], facilitating a shift in language instruction strategies, and goals and strategies for the mastery of mainstream American English (MAE) [i.e. standard English] . Later chapters include sample lessons and lesson organizers, information on implementation issues and questions about the program frequently asked by teachers, parents and administrators. The book also contains useful references for African and African American literature in general, African American children’s literature, the use of African American literature for contrastive analysis, reference books and journals, research articles, computer programs and videos. In addition, there is a glossary of selected terms for educators.

The goals of the program (from p.44 of the Handbook) are given below.
Table 1: English for Your Success
Goals
1. Acquire an awareness and appreciation of home language and culture
2. Develop receptive language in MAE
3. Acquire basic literacy skills
4. Develop an awareness and appreciation of language and cultural diversity
5. Be able to recognize and label the differences between AAL and MAE
6. Expand a personal thesaurus of conceptually coded word concepts
7. Analyze linguistic differences between MAE and AAL
8. Use MAE structure functionally in oral and written form
9. Recognize the language requirements of different situations
10. Demonstrate proficient use of MAE in written and oral form
11. Develop an expanded knowledge and appreciation of AAL and the language and culture of others
12. Communicate effectively in cross-cultural environments

Two publications for teachers have come out of the research project described above, Towards a More User-Friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. The first is Two-Way English by the same authors as the report on the project, published in 1999 by the Education Department of Western Australia, East Perth. The first chapter introduces teachers to Aboriginal English and the concept of “two-way English”. The second chapter describes the research project in language accessible to both teachers and parents. Chapter 3 gives more details about Aboriginal English and codeswitching to standard English, and goes on to present some implications for the teaching of Aboriginal students. Chapters 4 and 5 present the official curriculum framework in Western Australia and show how some of the findings about Aboriginal English can be applied in curriculum development and teaching. The final chapter and the appendices describe resources available for putting into practice the ideas presented earlier in the book. These include learning from Aboriginal colleagues, additional training and written resources.

The second publication is Solid English (Education Department of Western Australia, 1999). It has three sections: (1) What each Aboriginal student brings to school; (2) Things teachers can do to capitalise upon what Aboriginal students bring to school; and (3) Strategies teacher might like to use. It also includes appendices with notes about Aboriginal cultures, information about what makes Standard Australian English the standard dialect, and how Aboriginal English relates to [Australian] Kriol and pidgins and creoles in general.

For more information on the 3 publications on Aboriginal English mentioned above, write to:

Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research
Edith Cowan University
2 Bradford St
Mt Lawley, WA 6050
Australia
or
Education Department of Western Australia
151 Royal St
East Perth, WA 6004
Australia
or contact
Patricia Königsberg by email
patricia.konigsberg@eddept.wa.edu.au

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENTS
Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu, edited by Lamont Lindstrom and James Gwero, is the first book to be published internationally in Bislama. Published by and available from the Institute of Pacific Studies, USP, it relates stories of the involvement of ni-Vanuatu in World War II, the presence of American and other troops in Vanuatu, etc. Contact Linda Crowl (crowl_l@usp.ac.fj) for more information.