COVER STORY : THE TALK WARS : Educators Say Street Language Has No Place in the Job Market, but the Issue of Correcting Ethnic Speech Has Ignited an Emotional Debate

THE LESSON FOR THE DAY IS “CASH ENGLISH,” THE KIND OF ENGLISH that impresses job interviewers and helps land good jobs.

Two boys are standing in front of their sophomore English class at Crenshaw High School, trying to look cool but feeling sheepish about the conversation they’re about to demonstrate.

“Hello, how are you?” one boy says, his shoulders slumping.

“I am fine, thank you, and how are you?” the other boy responds, sounding stilted and overly chipper.

“I am fine, thank you.”

That exchange stands in sharp contrast to the lingo that normally rings through the halls at nearly every Los Angeles school. At Manual Arts High School, for instance, sophomore Elias Gonzalez talks to his friends using a mixture of Spanish and English commonly known as Spanglish.

“Hey man, there’s going to be a party manana ,” Gonzalez said. “Take your homey. Take your hermana. “

Meanwhile, Tynisa Jones, a junior at the school, slips into a language common among African-Americans when she says to her friend, “Yo’ girl, what up? Hey, who dat guy over dere? Now, he nice.”

In Los Angeles, where ethnic minorities make up about 87% of the school district’s enrollment, educators are struggling to come up with an effective but sensitive way to deal with the thousands of students who speak black English, Spanglish, slang and other forms of non-standard English in and out of the classroom.

While most educators agree that all students should be taught standard English, the whole issue of correcting speech, particularly when it is linked to a student’s ethnicity, has ignited much emotional debate.

Educators wonder whether they always should correct students’ speech or whether there are more important lessons to teach. They wonder whether students speak black English and Spanglish as a way of expressing pride in their community or whether language is a reason so many black and Latino students fail academically and have trouble finding jobs. And they wonder if they are fighting a losing battle by trying to change the speech patterns of students who have grown up immersed in the talk of the streets.

“Some people feel it’s the wrong way, but that’s just how we talk,” said Aqueelah Watkins, a 14-year-old African-American student at Foshay Junior High School. “If I feel like saying, ‘Where’s you going? Why ain’t you in class?’ that’s the way I’ll say it.”

Black English, which is believed to come from a West African pidgin that slaves developed to communicate with one another and their English-speaking masters, is spoken by many urban blacks as well as other blacks in informal settings.

Speakers of the dialect often use the word ain’t and do not conjugate the verb to be. (“I be going to school.”) Words such as chair, with and this often are pronounced as, share, wit, and dis. And some words are left out of sentences or are not fully pronounced. (“She cryin.’ ”) While such speech is common among black English speakers, linguists say the dialect is also used by many rural and Southern Anglos.

Slang words such as diss, homey and kickin’ it often are associated with black English because of the large number of African-Americans who use them. But linguists say slang, which is used by people of all ethnic backgrounds, should not be confused with black English because slang is linked almost exclusively to television, rap music and teen-age culture.

“You hear slang words when you listen to rap or when you watch comedy shows like ‘Martin,’ and he says, ‘Whassup?’ ” Watkins said. “You hear it, you like it, so you say it.”

Spanglish, which is spoken by Spanish-speaking immigrants and Latinos born in the United States, is less predictable than black English in that there are no distinct grammatical rules. Rather, Spanglish speakers blend Spanish words into English sentences or throw in English words when they are speaking Spanish.

While the term Spanglish is commonly used to describe the blending of the two languages, USC linguistics Prof. Carmen Silva-Corvalan believes it carries a negative connotation. “It implies that it’s spoken by people who know both languages but who cannot distinguish between them,” she said.

But some Latinos say they are proud to say they speak Spanglish.

In his song, “I Remember You, Homey,” Los Angeles rapper M.C. Blvd., otherwise known as Robert Hijar, uses Spanglish to tell the story of his friend who died in a gang-related shooting: “I remember when we were just a couple of mocosos (bratty kids), causing trouble all the time and getting caught. We were baboso (stupid).”

“People talk Spanglish because they don’t want to forget their roots,” he said. “In school, some teachers would say, ‘Don’t talk Spanish here,’ and that made me feel bad. For Latinos who were born in the U.S., speaking Spanglish is saying we’re proud of who we are.”

Likewise, Carl Banks Jr., a South-Central Los Angeles resident who self-published versions of a “Black Ghetto Language” dictionary in 1965 and in 1990, believes black English should be embraced rather than criticized.

In the preface to his 1990 dictionary, Banks writes: “To reach out and learn other words strengthens the mind. Study these words and you can start to Rap! Right on, brothers and sisters, right on!”

“Black language is part of the art of the ghetto,” he said. “Black language is relegated to a non-language because of discrimination and racism. But I think the system has got to change to allow for cultural differences.”

While most teachers see nothing wrong with students being proud of their heritage, they believe they have a responsibility to teach students standard English because that’s what translates into jobs and money.

Anita Luckie, an English teacher at Crenshaw High School who led the cash English exercise, told her students before the lesson that speaking standard English is one of the best ways to keep from being stereotyped.

“I once met a job interviewer from Northrop--a white guy--and he told me that he hates interviewing those students,” Luckie told the class. “He said he hates interviewing black and Hispanic students because they act like they’re stupid. He said, ‘They can’t speak to me, they don’t look me in the eye, and I can’t understand them.’

“If I go home, I’ll say to my mother, ‘Hey Mama, what’s happenin’? Gimme some sugar.’ But I wouldn’t say that to someone interviewing me for a job.”

A 1983 survey conducted by black educators and faculty members at North Texas State University found that African-American job hunters who speak black English get shorter interviews and fewer job offers than blacks who speak standard English.

The survey, based on interviews with 100 personnel managers of large businesses looking for secretaries, also found that the managers spent more time with standard English speakers and offered them almost 35% more in salary.

Chaundra Brown, a sophomore at Cal State Long Beach who graduated from Dorsey High School, said she didn’t realize how important it was to speak standard English until she started working.

“I work in the journalism department here at school answering phones, and the key thing is to have good communication skills,” she said. “I don’t think I would have gotten the job otherwise.

“Here on campus, most blacks pride themselves on using standard English. In high school, sometimes you would run into students who would jump if a Caucasian teacher corrected them. But in this day and time, I think it’s important to speak standard English.”

In addition to the argument that non-standard English inhibits minorities in the work force, Philadelphia educator Eleanor Wilson Orr concluded in her 1987 book, “Twice as Less,” that black English hinders students’ abilty in math and science because it lacks the prepositions, conjunctions and relative pronouns that are necessary to complete quantitative word problems.

Knowing from the start that her research would be controversial, Orr said she was not surprised to be bombarded with letters and phone calls. “Some people thought I was denigrating black culture,” she said. “It’s a highly sensitive issue because black English touches at the heart of black identity.”

The controversy over black English first came to the national spotlight in 1979, when a federal judge in Michigan ruled that a group of black children in the predominantly white Ann Arbor school district had been denied equal educational opportunities because teachers failed to recognize or accommodate their black dialect.

School officials were ordered to hold training sessions to sensitize teachers to students’ use of black English and to develop methods to teach those youngsters.

A year before that order, Thelma Duncan introduced the Proficiency in English Program (PEP)--designed to help minority students learn standard English--in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Duncan initiated the program, which now reaches more than 120,000 black and Latino students in 65 Los Angeles schools, after several black students in the district placed in the “limited English ability” category when they took a test designed for non-English speakers.

Using teaching methods similar to those used in English as a Second Language classes, PEP sets out to teach students cash English through repetition and oral exercises. Educators also teach students when they should use standard English.

“There’s nothing wrong with the cool language, but students must be proficient in the cash language to compete in the global market,” Duncan said. “We want to give students other options.”

However, many inner-city students often are caught in a vicious circle when it comes to language. If they don’t speak standard English, they will be corrected at school. But if they speak only standard English, their friends will ridicule them.

“Most of the time if you speak Spanglish or say something in slang like, ‘Hey homes, let’s go kick it,’ teachers will correct you and tell you to speak correct English,” said Erwin Gallego, a freshman at Foshay Junior High. “They’ll be like, ‘What you saying?’ and you’ll feel embarrassed.”

Stanford University linguistics Prof. John Baugh said the only way teachers can teach students standard English is by motivating them to think that it’s important and that they’re not selling out. “It’s a conflict with kids because they don’t want to lose their identity or show a lack of allegiance to their community,” he said.

Luther Waters, a sophomore at Crenshaw High School, said he understands the importance of speaking standard English in the classroom. But he said he never wants to lose the ability to communicate in his community.

“If I said, ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘I am fine, thank you, and how are you?’ to my friends, they’ll start laughing,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘Where you come from?’ But in the classroom, I know I should show my teachers more respect.”

While the PEP has received accolades from educators statewide and has served as a model for school districts nationwide, linguists such as William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania say programs designed to change students’ speaking patterns have done little to improve reading and writing skills.

“If you want to change a child’s speech, you won’t necessarily improve their reading and writing skills,” said Labov, who has done extensive research on black English. “A teacher’s responsibility is to teach a child to read and write first. A child will acquire standard English almost automatically after that.”

While there has been no formal research to gauge PEP’s effectiveness, students involved with PEP did just as poorly on the reading portion of the 1991-92 California Assessment Program as students not in the program.

Only 20% of the eighth-graders at Harte Junior High and 22% of the students at Foshay--the two junior high schools in the district that have implemented PEP--met minimum expectations on the reading portion of the state test. Throughout the district, about 30% passed the reading section, while the state average was 42%.

Duncan said that PEP, which focuses on language development, cannot be held solely responsible for low reading scores.

“I think young people have to be involved in an integrated language development approach, which includes developing listening, reading and writing skills,” she said. “PEP is a program that enhances the basic skills they learn at school.”

Along with developing basic skills, Donald Bakeer, an English and drama teacher at Washington High School, believes teachers should be helping students develop ideas.

“If all you teach is periods and commas, it inhibits the flow of ideas,” he said. “One problem with kids is that their forms of expression are being oppressed. I don’t want them to be hurling profanity, but I want them to feel the freedom to create.

“I try to tell them that the language they speak is creative at times, but that it can be a handicap if they go north of Olympic (Boulevard). One of the problems with youths at our school is that their language reeks of illegitimacy. One of the things I want to do is teach them how to be legitimate.”