Validating Vernaculars
English Education has typically taught "correct" language usage, but studies are showing that students who are allowed to use their native vernaculars in class perform better on standardized tests.
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| Today's students come with a range of ethnic, cultural, and language differences. |
- Historical Connection:
The validation of an individual's vernacular is a very Romantic-era-influenced idea. The Romantic time period emphasized the importance of the individual's original thoughts, ideas, and "genius"—all of which cannot be adequately expressed without the use of that individual's native tongue. It's not fair to limit our students' power of expression and educational success to the words we allow them to use.
- Communication Connection:
Teaching and speaking "correct" English has long been an established path to gaining ethos in school, work, and society. However, we live in a digital civilization with access to instant translations, definitions, and other helpful tools; it makes very little sense to insist on a standard dialect when we have so many ways to easily understand each other literally at our fingertips.
Teachers constantly face backlash for the books they choose to include in their classrooms, leading school boards to ban valuable books from being taught, thereby damaging and limiting their students' education.
- Historical Connection:
Banning books isn't new. Ever since the printing press kicked into gear back during the Renaissance, someone has been protesting the spread of ideas through literature. It's often been used by governments to quell literature based on arguments contrary to the current political scene, such as when Hitler burned books during his rise to power.
- Communication Connection:
The banning of books is rhetorically problematic. First, it limits the audience of the book. Second, it destroys the book's rhetorical testimony, or witness, of the ideas it holds. If students don't get the chance to read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," for example, they miss the witness of racism and prejudice that those pages hold. This systematic blockage of ideas is detrimental to students' education.
In a world that is focused on STEM advances, many people wonder why English should be studied. However, English remains valuable since it helps students develop the critical thinking, analyzing, and communication skills STEM fields rely on.
- Historical Connection:
The inclusion of literary arts in a well-rounded and marketable education stems from the Renaissance ideals of court life, or the "Renaissance man." Courtiers were encouraged to learn many skills in order to be better contributions to society, with a large emphasis on languages, public speaking, and language composition. This has continued to a degree into our digital era, where we reward politicians who communicate well with elected positions, witty internet posts with retweets, and more.
- Communication Connection:
By including English education in nearly every students' yearly schedule, schools are consciously choosing to give their pupils the rhetorical tools necessary to succeed in any field. They are helping future scientists understand how to establish their ethos before presenting a paper, training future engineers to consider their audiences' level of understanding before explaining a complex project, and helping future politicians understand the importance of kairos and decorum when it comes to lobbying for political changes.
Image credit: "Amigos em campus universitario" by Naasson Azevedo is licensed under CC BY
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