Friday, October 30, 2009

Extra Credit Blog: The Ebonics Controversy

Dear All,

This week, you may choose to do this blog for extra credit. Each blog you write is worth about 2% of your grade. Therefore, an "A" on this blog will give you an additional 2% on your overall course grade. And "A-/B+" will get you 1.5. A "B" will get you 1%. A "C" will get you 0.5%. Anything lower than that... well, I'm not going to read it, because y'all are better writers than that!

You have a choice between two questions:

1. Choose a resolution from the Oakland Policy Statement (Baugh, pages 312-313). I recommend 2, 7, 9,12, or 13. Discuss whether you think that resolution is a good educational policy for students whose heritage language is Ebonics. Discuss, also, whether the changes that the educators made (the text in bold) weakened or improved the resolution.

2. As we've discovered, there were a lot of controversies within the Oakland Ebonics Controversy of 1996. People were debating:

Teaching techniques
Governmental funding
The linguistic validity of Ebonics
The question of whether Ebonics is a dialect or a language
Questions of racism in education

Which of these issues do you think is most central to -- is really at the heart of -- the Ebonics Controversy? Discuss why that issue is more important than the others.

This Extra Credit Assignment is due by Monday, Nov. 2!