Students' Rights to their Own Language (SRTOL)

Tomorrow I’m substitute teaching again for a class called JILG (Jobs for Illinois Graduates). When I subbed today I followed the instructions of the teacher for whom I was sitting in. As well, since when we finished early they all wanted to goof around on the internet, in the process of allowing them to have their play time, I threw in a lil writing instruction. Not much. Just a Google search of sample resumes and business cover letters as well as a few writing center sites so they’d at least be aware of them for future reference. (Btw I know that last sentence is a grammatical embarrassment and, relevant to this post, the class is working on resume and cover letter writing.) At the end of the day I found out I’d be subbing again tomorrow for the same class. Not only that, but the teacher asked me to “do an English lesson or something. You do English; just do something like that in class tomorrow,” he told me. No problem. We’ll build off the Google search of sample cover letters and do something like writing another cover letter imitating one that they read yesterday. Imitation.

Now, I bring all this up in order to discuss the Valerie Felita Kinloch article, “Revisiting the Promise of SRTOL: Pedagogical Strategies” in the recent CCC. I’ve done quite a bit of work with SRTOL pedagogy. Since “completing” my M.A. thesis on Ebonics and ace in college classrooms my stance and professional opinion on language instruction in linguistically diverse classrooms has changed a bit. I love the work of Smitherman, Richardson, Gilyard, Villanueva, Banks, and the many others. Over the past few years, though, I’ve come to (privately) align myself more with Delpit and McWhorter (especially Losing the Race). I have a tendency to not fully develop the rationale behind my thinking here on this blog; I can be a bit of a reductionist at times (e.g. see my comments on literacy v. comp studies literature). With that disclaimer in mind, my ideological associations sound something like this: Granting Students’ Rights to their Own Language is an honorable pedagogical philosophy. It is an honorable and just thing to recognize, promote and reward the languages of our Other students as we would our non-Other students. I even think that this is what should occur witin the walls of the academy. Academic training is not corporate training. Allowing non-standardized Englishes the same currency within a classroom is important. I’m not being sarcastic. On this point academics and non-academics simply don’t/can’t agree. The struggle occurs not in presenting students with this organizational “legislation” (it should be noted that real-world legislation in no way reflects SRTOL [e.g. English Only Movement] and, in fact, the reality of our world is that globalization is bringing about language death at an unparalleled rate – Thomason describes the extinction rate of languages in her book ). The problem comes when we enact SRTOL pedagogies that are at odds with the economic systems they’ll be inhabiting beyond the yards of our campuses.

My position has evolved not because of the Smitherman’s and McWhorter’s of the world but because of the Brittany’s, Andre’s, Clarissa’s, Ronald’s and the many other students who repeatedly expressed their frustrations with the honorable intentions of a SRTOL pedagogy. “It’s bullshit.” “Allowing me to speak Ebonics is setting us up for failure.” Powerful words.

Kinloch’s article is an example of a text that might be on my Composition Studies list. Hers is an example of a piece of literature that is of use to a scholar only within the walls of academe. When I hand back the JILG students’ cover letters tomorrow and help them with their wording and grammar and how they present themselves through language (both on a cover letter and in an interview) I’m not going to inform them of their Right to their Own Language. It just wouldn’t make sense. (Btw, just b/c they are all white doesn’t preclude them from the same linguistic discrimination any Other person might live.) The students I’ll be teaching tomorrow are in JILG because they plan on getting jobs after high school – not go to college. Brittany, Andre, Clarissa and Ronald, too, wanted jobs after (college) graduation, and, according to them, it was a waist of time to talk to them about a right that is, as Kinloch’s students observed, ignored. Informing students of their rights to their own language is one thing - living that “right” is quite another. My experience is that a SRTOL pedagogy is not liberatory and neither is it “critical” (except, maybe, for the white instructor).