issues of language

I gathered many ideas of different stereotypical attitudes towards the way people talk from our reading. Everyone’s dialect is different in many regions.  First and foremost, you should never judge intellect without getting to know the person individually.  Why would a teacher pass judgment on a student for having any type of accent?  How could anyone say a person could not educate themselves because of the lack of skills to communicate with “standard English?”  The English language is one of the hardest languages to learn, let alone to read and write it.  Just like the girl who didn’t understand the concept of silent reading.  Or the child who knew he wrote a word, but didn’t understand what he had written.  I still have trouble reading and writing proper grammar.  It is a shame that some countries do not have enough funding to provide a good education for its citizens, just as the villagers in El Salvador.  The English language changes everyday.

            In my opinion, poverty is the biggest leading factor of why children to do get the adequate education they need.  Poverty causes social, psychological, and behavioral problems to name a few.  Lower class families do not have the money for leisure books, newspapers, and other reading materials.  In the educational process parents must provide enough time to help the child at home.  Lower income families, judging from statistics, do not spend the allotted time for at home education.  Middle to upper class families buy books and give enough attention to their kids, one, because if they are middle to upper class, the parents do not want their children to grow up and be the kinds of people who are being stereotyped in these passages.  Reading these passages about Jenny and Donny gave me a realization of how true these statistics are.  Ms. M should have been viewed by the board, just as well as the other teachers who passed Donny “just because.” There are other things that can be done, but that is another subject. Children who come from these uneducated societies do not know how to get out of them.  “It is believed that they “just don’t have it” as far as intelligence and or the will to learn, to achieve, to move out of their impoverished conditions go.” (133)  The only low income children who develop those skills of reading and writing, there must be some type of motivation for the child to strive in a world of knowledge.

            It should never go as low as saying this person lacks intelligence because of the way they use their individual dialect to have a personal identity.  “For example, the Boston dialect of the Kennedys or the southern dialect of Jimmy Carter are never pointed to as evidence of cognitive and linguistic deficit.”(133)  I live in the country and I see poverty everywhere I look.  I talk to people who have thick country accents.  These people are educated enough for their life styles they love, simple.  So people have a draw in their voice and some have speech impediments.  They are all good people, through and through.  I know this individual who did not graduate from high school.  This individual also has a difficult problem with reading, he may be dyslexic or have another impairment.  My point is, his cognitive thought process is more active than any book smart person if have ever met.  Also, his problem solving skills are phenomenal.  He can take a part anything, from cars, to houses, and all kinds of electrical devises and fix them.  That is something an educated person could not do without reading a book.  I believe that many people have street smart characteristics that help them overlap their lack of education.  In my opinion, sometimes book smart people are the most ignorant people I have ever met.  And they talk with perfect “standard English.”

            My last thought would be “No one “talks” like written Language.  Everyone uses fragmented syntax different pronunciation patterns, and different types of vocabulary words when they talk as compared to when they read and write.”(137)   Teachers should not judge their students by their “Nonstandard, socially marked dialects…to prevent people from learning to read and write.”  Our teachers out there must understand that the children we are teaching today are going to run our government in the future.  We need every child in America to be educated and prepared to enter the world after public schools.  Who is going to run our country when we are older?