Sunday, May 23, 2010

Clearly Profiling

Have you ever gotten one of those "customer service representatives" or "technical support" persons who is obviously in some off-shore telephone boiler room that speaks with such a heavy accent that you finally give up in frustration because you can't understand a word they say?

What if that person were your teacher? What if they were your teacher of English?

Is There a Spanish Version of Ebonics?

How could a child be expected to learn to speak English if the teacher can't be understood by native speakers of the language? Why shouldn't we expect that a teacher be able to speak the language with grammatical precision?

Maybe a more serious question is how did these teachers get certified in the first place? Do we need some form of license renewal for teachers which insures that they continue to meet minimum standards of competence?

Just asking.

3 comments:

Scott McCray said...

Ed,

You're a bad, bad man for even thinking such a thing. Why that's RAAAAAAAAAACIST. Yeah, I feel the same way.

-Scott
(Bitter, middle-aged white guy clinging to religion and guns) (grin)

juvat said...

When my son was in 3rd grade, we were on a hardship tour to Hawaii and had him enrolled in a Catholic school off base. Come first set of report cards, his spelling grade was well below acceptable, so Mom and I set up a meeting with Sister. Turns out Sister was brand new to the Order and from the Philippines. Having been there several times, I had no problem understanding her except she kept talking about something being re-charred. I was befuddled as to what burning something again had to do with the subject at hand, my son, Rick's spelling. In one of my flashes of brilliance, it occurred to me that she was referring to him by his more formal name and suddenly the focus of the spelling problem shifted a bit. Luckily she had a sense of humor and was willing to work with us. From then on, Mom or I would tape record the spelling words for her to play to the class. Racist Haoli's dissin' the Sistah la dat!

MagiK said...

What?? You can nnot be seriously calling for teachers to actually be competent to teach their subject matter.....why that flys in the face of every UNION ethic!!!

/sarcasm