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Abstract
In today’s complex, multicultural world, discourses and language vernaculars are more diverse than ever. Educational institutions often privilege the historically dominant vernacular (such as white middleclass English which is sometimes called “Standard English”). This language bias disadvantages students form working class and ethnically diverse communities. An examination of the debates on discourse and power in the US will have applicable suggestions for multicultural education in other parts of the world. Because of educational privileges granted to White European families, they still make up the majority of US students attending university. The privileging of “Standard English” assures that the transmission of knowledge and framing of educational goals favors those who share this discourse practice. Effective multicultural teachers deploy discourse that is an invented hybrid - neither formal professional English nor the primary community discourses of the students in their classes. It is a mixture that marks points of unity as well as steps towards induction to new discourses that reach across different generations and different local experiences within the complex web of Global Emergent Discourse. Multicultural teachers use a hybrid discourse to effectively engage students in a complex curriculum. The hybrid Global Emergent Discourse is also a validation of the perspective and values of both the teachers and the students and stands in contrast to and critique of the one way transmission of knowledge and framing of educational goals that is often the official practice of schooling in the United States. This paper is proposes that a broader, more inclusive, expansion of language diversity can allow students from all communities to not only have access to higher education but can reshape education to serve the needs and interests of all communities in respect to democratic principles and social justice.
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Rick Ayers
Rick Ayers is an assistant professor of education at the University of San Francisco in the Urban Education and Social Justice cohort. He taught in the Communication Arts and Sciences small school at Berkeley High School, where he pioneered innovative and effective strategies for academic and social success for a diverse range of students. He is the co-author, with his brother William Ayers, of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom and is also author of A Death in the Family: Teaching through Tears.