Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement Among African American Students (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making the connection: Language and academic achievement among African American students ed. by Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian, Orlando Taylor Iman Makeba Laversuch Making the connection: Language and academic achievement among African American students. Ed. by Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian, and Orlando Taylor. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1999. Pp. 180. Despite many significant advances in African American scholastic achievement, this group still consistently ranks among the lowest on standardized tests nationwide. To address this problem, the Coalition on Language Diversity in Education convened in January 1998. An outgrowth of that conference, this book seeks to tackle this ongoing problem from a number of different and yet still complementary angles. The multidimensional approach taken here is quite necessary, for as the contributors themselves point out, African American scholastic achievement is far more complicated than it is sometimes conceived, encompassing a number of different, interrelated factors. According to John Rickford, all across America, poor academic performance among African American students can be seen as a function of diminished school funding and reduced teacher involvement. However, as Terry Meier explains, even among the most exceptionally dedicated educators who have ample resources at their disposal, unchallenged ignorance and prejudice have continued to poison the academic environment. Courtney Cazden rightly stresses that if the circle of underachievement is to [End Page 849] be broken, the relationship between students and teachers must be better understood. Towards that end, Kelli Harris-Wright and Asa G. Hilliard present many of the lessons learned from the ongoing Ebonics debate along with recent linguistic and pedagogical research on bidialectal programs. This information is then effectively placed by Walt Wolfram within the larger context of language acquisition involving exchanges between speakers of nonstandard and standard varieties of English. Geneva Smitherman follows this up by stressing the importance of using this to establish a national policy for success. However, as John Baugh reminds us, before this goal can be achieved, there is still much to be done. In many cases, we still have yet to come to a consensus on a set of terms with which to discuss this topic. What exactly is meant by the terms dialect or variety, standard or nonstandard, vernacular or slang? The result of this lack of agreement is unmistakable. All too often, what begins as an academic discussion degenerates into a series of polemical tirades with little or no hope for mutual understanding or progress. On the negative side, this newest reference on African American achievement tends to suffer somewhat from redundancy, needlessly repeating not only points which have already been made in previous chapters but also in other works written on the topic. In addition, there is a slight tendency among some writers to overgeneralize research findings. As Orlando Taylor reminds us, such overgeneralization can be exceedingly counterproductive. No two African Americans are alike, and consequently we must stop hoping to find the one magical cure for healing the wounds suffered by this community. Having said this, on the positive side, this reference achieves much by simply stressing the need to finally use our collective common sense. No student, irrespective of his/her racial classification, can perform his/her very best without adequate support. Thus, as the authors reiterate themselves, the issue of academic achievement is not simply a question of education, it is a question of human rights. Iman Makeba Laversuch Frieburg University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America