Minority Educational Failure: Is Dialect a Factor?

Abstract

This paper examines pedagogical responses to the documentation of the features of non-standard dialects in the United States, Britain, Canada, and the Caribbean over about the last 20 years. It is argued that, beyond demonstrating the universal principle that all dialects are structurally equal, rule-governed, and complex, there have been few positive results in schools for non-standard dialect-speaking students of the efforts to document structural features. It is further argued that functional differences between the way language is used in the school and the way it is used in various minority and poor communities may be much more important differences for investigation. Finally, the paper concludes with the recommendation that teachers become ethnographers of communication in the communities in which they teach, so as to come to share experiences and language functions with their students.

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