Tongue Tied": Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence pg.134

Chapter summary

The article Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence by William Labov displays how minority groups got some straggles on English proficiency, and how it becomes the main factor for their low educational achievement. There were many theories that try to explain why this happens. Professionals who have investigated this fact have established different positions. Some of them have believed that heredity is substantially more important than environment in determining intelligence. Others maintain that environmental factors rather than any genetic deficit explain the poor performance of lower educational performance. And, the third position held by professionals such as; linguists and anthropologists locate the problem in the relationship between students and school system. It has to be understood that all position are rooted in the fact that everyone has the right to learn the standard language and culture.

Accounting for the poor performance of children in schools requires trying to discover what kind of disadvantage or defect the children are suffering from. In fact, we can’t improve children language proficiency if we don’t know what their deficit factors are. William Labov said: “The viewpoint which has been widely accepted and used as the basis for large intervention programs is that the children show a cultural deficit as a result of an impoverished environment in their early years” (Santa Ana, 2004, p.134). This theory appears as the notion of verbal deprivation. However, verbal motivation has no basis in social reality. It is not clear to establish that students’ bad performance is related to socioeconomic status. Segregated ethnic groups, however, seem to do worse than others: in particular, Indian, Mexican-American and black children. In conclusion, we are dealing with American society cast system, essentially a color-marking system.

Considering that the most extreme view of the Verbal Deprivation Theory points out that the lower class black children have no language at all takes away factors from their language proficiency. Basil Bernstein sets the idea that much of lower class language consists of a kind of incidental emotional accompaniment to action here and now (2004, p.136). Thus, the deficit of language proficiency is related to the circumstances that the child experiences and not of the language capacity of the child.

William Labov does not disagree with Carl Bereiter who from his interaction with young black children shows a limited use of language by black students. The Bereiter’s program is based upon the premise that black children must have a language which they can learn. It provides an alternate explanation such as: the mono-syllabic language from black students is a result of the context of the adult-child interaction, not of the language capacity of the child. The author comes to this conclusion due to a series of interviews with a group of boys in Harlem. From the interviews we can notice that the boys had knowledge of their language, and could speak freely. It is crucial to establish that the social situation is the most powerful determinant of language proficiency. William Labov makes us think about our assumptions of how our students use language.

In the article, the author seeks to discredit the idea of verbal deprivation. He said: “Linguists are in an excellent position to demonstrate the fallacies of the verbal deprivation theory (2004, p.151). He also articulates the position of professionals who agree that American Educational System has to be adapted to the languages and learning styles of students’ majority.

References

Santa Ana, O. (2004). Tongue Tied, The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education. Rowman& Little Field Publisher; New York.

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