Marie Jean-Conte
APLING 623
10/7/2012
Week 6 critique
Bartolome, L. The Misteaching Of Academic Discourses: The Politics of Language
The focus of this chapter is identified in its opening sentence: “The education of
low-status linguistic-minority students in the United States can be generally characterized
as a form of miseducation that continues to produce an unacceptable high rate of failure
among Latino and in particular Mexican American students.”
Basically, what Bartolome is doing in this chapter is challenging the dominant
forms of discourse, as well as the generally unarticulated assumptions that underlie them,
with respect to the education of linguistic minority children. By critiquing the commonly
held notion of “decontextualized language” and utilizing a framework that emphasizes
the political and ideological dimensions of teaching and classroom practice, Bartolome is
able to provide a critical account of the ways in which academic discourses are
mistaught. For example, Mexican American students who have not had the opportunity
to develop academic discourse skills, through no fault of theirs, are tested in the very
same discourse skills and knowledge in which they have not been taught. Bartolome
explains, “This is what Macedo has called ‘pedagogy of entrapment’”.
Bartolome points out that many times, “teachers often make false assumptions
concerning the level of the linguistic –minority students ability to use English discourse;
moreover, they seldom teach these discourses explicitly to students.” What a horrible way
to set a child up for disappointment, given that many poor city children are capable of the
highest standard of achievement; if only expectations were set higher for them. Many
times teachers fail to acknowledge that a child who is proficient in face-to-face
communication has not necessarily achieved proficiency in the more abstract and
disembodied academic language to engage in classroom activities especially in the later
grades. For example, the child needs to learn what nouns and verbs are and what
synonyms and antonyms are. Such activities require the child to separate language from
the context of actual experiences and to learn to deal with abstract meanings.
Through the analysis of a case study and solid theoretical argumentation,
Bartolome points out problems with general assumptions about teaching that educators
should face in order to avoid “misteaching” students in their classrooms. It is obvious
why all teachers should heed the common call to teach all students academic discourses,
which play a pivotal role in the educational achievement of our students.
From a linguistic perspective, our ELL students in the Boston Public Schools aren’t
any different than the Mexican American in terms of their academic failure, which is
attributed to their lack of English proficiency. Bartolome mentioned that recent research
shows that proficiency in English, in and of itself, is not sufficient for academic success.
I totally agree with this finding. A perfect example is a student, whom I will call
“Vicky”, came to our school from Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010. Without
being exhaustive, allow me to talk a little bit about her experience.
Vicky did not speak a word of English but she was literate in both French and
Creole. During writer’s workshop, she was allowed to communicate her knowledge via
the discourse of her native language. She thrived in the classroom; by March 2011 she
scored proficient in MATH MCAS with need improvement in Language Arts. She
outscored many of her classmates who were fluent in English and had been here in
United States long before her. Vicky was able to transfer her knowledge in L1 into the
new academic discourse; her success is what Cummins refers to as Common underlying
proficiency (CUP). Vicky’ s primary language literacy skills will continue to provide her
a conceptual foundation for long-term growth in English literacy.
The real issue is that because linguistic minority students often struggle academically
even after they are able to carry out conversations in English, scholars have suggested
that differences exist between the language used for school purposes and that everyday
communication. According to this view, the issue is not only how much English needs to
be learned, but also what kind of English. Bartolome challenges researchers and
practitioners to reflect on how best to provide working class and language-minority
children with high-quality education. While it can be tempting to use students’
backgrounds as an excuse for poor academic performance, Bartolome reminds us that “it
is important to determine whether teacher’s instructional demands and their evaluations
of student’s contextualizing strategies correspond to their actual classroom practices
regarding the teaching and use of academic discourses.” By making school a more-
satisfying experience for many cultural minority groups, cultural responsive teaching
should provide a better a better chance for academic gains.
References:
Bartolome, L. ( 1998) The misteaching of academic discourses: the politics
Classroom. Oxford: Westview Press
Cummins, J. (1979) Cognitive/ academic language proficiency, linguistic
Interdependence, the optimum age question, and some other matters