AAVE
At this point, I would like you (and of course others, too) to think about the AAVE (African American Vernacular Language) issues in terms of the primary and secondary discourses from Gee’s article. Would it be possible to encourage the AAVE in the classroom, where students learn the secondary discourses? What do you think?
Before I start, I would like to say that I am not a total proponent of this kind of notion or Foucault. I still have a lot of doubts and hesitance. One of my biggest objections is ethics. There is no space for ethics. Despite this, I would like to understand this issue in the light of Foucaultian philosophy.
The notion of discourse became clear to me yesterday after I had learned from another class about Michel Foucault and his understanding of discourse. Discourses can be defined as reality produced by power. Let me give you an example. Yesterday, after my class, I read a newspaper article that maintains that lefties (people who mainly use their left hand) are inclined to shyness and indecisiveness. It also claimed that it resulted from difference in brain. I critiqued this article that the shyness and indecisiveness of lefties are by-products of many people’s message that the difference of hand usage is not just difference but symbol of being wrong. I am a lefty myself. Not all people said it is wrong but there were enough people to make me think I am wrong. In my 3rd year of elementary school, I had to clean the whole classroom alone every day after school just because I did not quit writing using my left hand. At that time, I just thought I deserved it because I did not obey my teacher when he tried to correct me. Actually, due to my family’s culture, I had not realized until my 3rd grade that I was writing with different hand from majority of students in my classroom. In other words, my primary discourse about using left hand was different from the secondary discourse held by my teacher in the classroom. In Korea lefties are extremely rare and I have seen only a few true lefties (eat and write with left hand) in Korea in my entire life. It’s not because Koreans are born righties, but because parents and grandparents forced them to change their hand usage. Until now, so many people tried to correct me and advised me that I should change my primary hand usage. Before I served in the army, which is mandatory as a Korean man, one of frequent advices I heard was that there is no rifle for lefties in Korean army and I will have difficulty using a rifle. In fact, I did not have any problem using a rifle with my right hand. I was not a sniper, but I was not a bad shooter, either. What is evident about my being lefty is that so many messages and advices of negative aspect of being lefty constituted or at least influenced my identity, resulting in my own shyness and indecisiveness. Anyhow, this is discourse. It can be correct or incorrect. This is never neutral. Usually I cannot point to an individual for this kind of discourse but there has been one for a long time, as least in Korea.
If this kind of produced reality about lefties is held by adult family members, it becomes a primary discourse. If held by society, it becomes a secondary discourse. If held dominantly by dominant group of people, it becomes a dominant discourse. It is not necessarily negative. It also is not necessarily positive. A discourse, I claim, is negative when it segregates or silences others. Usually sufferers know this segregation and silencing while majority of people do not realize this as problematic. On the contrary, a discourse is positive, when it promotes justice and unification. I believe that this notion of negative and positive aspect of discourse is closely related to education.
Existence of discourse is the reality. It is in everywhere, including our schools. It is a teacher’s decision, whether to critique dominant discourses or just accept them. I want to point out that I do not claim that dominant discourses are by nature positive or negative. I can only say that discourses can be used positively and negatively. Critiquing discourse, of course, means both acknowledging the goodness in it and finding out negative aspect of it. It further entails valuing what is good and being wary about what is bad.
This is my contention. When silencing some or making them feel wrong about what is not regarded as wrong in one’s primary discourse, discourses may function negatively. If a teacher realizes the negative aspect of a discourse, he can choose to be careful about it. When motivating students and helping students feel comfortable, rather than inferior or wrong, I can say that discourses are used positively. Or I can say some discourses are better. If critiqued fairly and used carefully, any discourse can do much good to our students.
I have a friend back in Korea, Joseph Kim, who speaks English with virtually native fluency. When he was in low grade, he had to come with his parents to the U.S. for a semester or so and go to an American school. He has a father who is Korean and a mother who is an American. Being born and lived in Korea, he could speak in English but did not learn to read and write in English. Evidently, his home language was Korean, with strong influence of English due to his mother. One day, not long after he began to go to American school, he was in an English classroom and teacher began to ask each student verbally spell their own names. He was sitting in the middle of the classroom and as his turn comes near he became extremely nervous. He was about to cry when his name was called. The teacher was careful. For some reason, she seemed to have known that Joseph did not know how to spell his name. Instead of asking Joseph to spell his name verbally, she asked him to come to the front and write his name in Korean on the blackboard. She could ask him to try to spell his name in English and help him learn English spelling. But she chose another way. After Joseph finished writing his name in Korean with ease and confidence, she applauded Joseph and praised his ability to write his name in a language which is not English. Students were greatly moved by her praise since they suddenly realized that none of them knew how to spell their name in a language that is not English. Kids began applauding him, too. Joseph, who could be invited to learn English spelling, suddenly became a star in the school. His classmates began to ask him to write their name in Korean. Students from other grades also heard that Joseph could write his name in a different language and came to him and asked him to write their names in Korean for them. He confessed that it took him almost two weeks to write many students name in Korean. Joseph may not have learned how to spell his name in English at that moment. However, he confessed that it was one of his most valuable moments of his life and this experience greatly motivated him to learn not only English but also Korean. Right now, he is a superintendent of a school regarded by many Koreans that one of greatest schools in Korea. One may claim that his native fluency is from his mother, but he confessed that his career as an educator, whose school has a policy of having two kids with disability (one with mental and another with physical) in every classroom of 20 kids to enable non-disabled students to understand differences, came from one priceless experience in an English classroom in the U.S.
