People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
John McwhorterRead
It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Black English is a valid dialect, not a series of mistakes.
In this quote, John McWhorter emphasizes the importance of recognizing Black English as a legitimate form of communication rather than treating it as incorrect or inferior. He advocates for an educational approach that enriches students' linguistic skills by adding to their existing dialects instead of trying to eradicate them, thereby promoting linguistic diversity and cultural understanding.
Themes
Black EnglishDialectEducationLanguageCultural Understanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about linguistic diversity, you might say, 'As John McWhorter explained, understanding Black English enriches our approach to education.'
More from John Mcwhorter
All quotes →People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
John McwhorterRead
People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
John McwhorterRead
Similar quotes
The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.
George WashingtonRead
Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel. The goal of The Dinner Party is to break this cycle.
Judy ChicagoRead
To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
Alan BennettRead
Heart and head are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved.
Giacomo CasanovaRead
We do not wish to abolish teaching and to make every man his own master, but if the curates will not teach the gospel, the layman must have the Scripture, and read it for himself, taking God for his teacher.
William TyndaleRead
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.
Leo BuscagliaRead