Can you teach what you dont know?
The title sparked an interest discussion with respect to blog communication. Should teachers expect the formal rules associated with orthography, etymology syntax ,and the prosody of grammar to be followed--because that is what they know.
How many years did the church prosecute, killed, and burned people at the stake because they wanted them to keep on saying the world was flat.
Should teachers who do not know the language of the students impose on them what language to use, or should they go out and learn the language to communicate with the students? If a teacher do not know the language that is being used, will they be eventually be out of a job?
Comments
The analogy I use to
The analogy I use to explain this idea is: Are we fighting a fire after the house has already burned down.
We have limited time in schools to teach so everything comes at the expense of something else - when we teach one thing we necessarily sacrifice something else we could have taught.
In this case, do we need students to focus more on thinking skills and hopefully develop the language we value on the way or should the primary emphasis be on building the language skills and will it make them more capable to think? It's a little bit chicken and the egg but I think if we teach students to teach and explore and to acquire those processes, better language skills will follow.
Part of the job of teaching
Part of the job of teaching is providing students with the tools to survive in mainstream society. Included in this is the ability to communicate. For better or worse, our society values Standard American English as the language of communication for business and government, so students need to know how to speak, read, and write in SAE in order to thrive within American mainstream society. Without this language tool, their options for work and interaction with diverse others would become more limited.
Kids learn what they need to
Kids learn what they need to survive on their own turf. This includes street language and street attire. Baggy clothes make even a skinny kid look potentially BIG. Even the drug-exchange hand shake is necessary for survival. The school is in the 'hood but is the school part of the 'hood? I certainly would never tell kids not to act the way they do outside of school. They know their world much better than I do. I'm talking about 170th St. from Walton to Webster. Street language is appropriate on the street; school language is appropriate in the school. I'd like to be able to show them that there is another mode of behavior and communication other than what they see all too often around them. I'd like to believe that there is.