Using Ebonics in school blog #7

In one of my other classes that I am taking online, we read about "who are today's students". The chapters discussed how people and students that are in schools and our community are different from each other; their culture, class, and race. The chapters discussed how different cultures speak with different dialects. It also discussed how people judge those speaking English with a different dialect than standard English (i.e. Ebonics) and how they are perceived. We discussed a case study of a teacher who constantly corrected the students Ebonic miscues. A student is reading a paragraph and the teacher correcting them. Here is a little bit of it;
S (student): Yesterday I washed my bruvver.
T (teacher): Wait minute, what's that word again? - points to brother
S: Bruvver
T: No. Look at these letters in the middle. - points to brother- Remember to read what you see. Do you remember how we say that sound? Put your tongue between your teeth and say /th/.....

This is just one little piece of it, the rest was the teacher correcting the student and making the student repeat the word, than the sentence. How did the meaning of the sentence change by saying bruvver instead of brother? What did this student learn? The student may have been experiencing many feeling such as anger at the teacher, embarrassment and humiliation. They may feel that they are dumb or stupid and that they can not learn. If a student has these feeling why would they want want to learn from that teacher or enjoy learning if they are constantly correct. Often people judge those who use Ebonics when speaking instead of standard English to speak as dumb, slow learners, poor, and not educated. But that is not true. Ebonics is a systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties ( http://homepages.dordt.edu/bnbkl/Paper%202.pdf).

So what is Ebonics or Black English? Dictionary.com defines Ebonics as: a dialect of American English characterized by pronunciations, syntactic structures, and vocabulary associated with and used by some North American blacks and exhibiting a wide variety and range of forms varying in the extent to which they differ from standard English (http://homepages.dordt.edu/bnbkl/Paper%202.pdf). What are some stereotypes of those who use Ebonics? As I stated above, some would say that they are dumb/stupid, uneducated, poor, they don't care to learn, "ghetto" like, or they will be a drop out.

As educators, what are we to do? When a students reads the word brother as bruvver, do we correct them or not, if reading it as bruvver does not change the meaning of the sentence what does it hurt? The special educator in me says that we should correct them (with my students, they may have a speech deficit and need help correcting their speech patterns or they are just learning the letter sounds and patterns). The following is a great article how Ebonics should be allowed in our schools http://www.york.cuny.edu/yorkscholar/v1/pdfs/thomas_ebonics_sp04.pdf.

What do you think? Should we allow students to use Ebonics in school or should we continue to correct those who use Ebonics when they read.