Speak pidgin,
think pidgin,
write pidgin?That's the fear of some isle
educators, who blame local lingo
for poor writing scores. But
linguists say you can't ignore
pidgin when teachingHow pidgin helps -- and hinders
By Crystal Kua
Star-BulletinA child offers his playmate a treat.
Waving his hands, the playmate replies, "Nah, I no like."
Should the schools embrace or reject the everyday way of talking to improve education?
It's a question that has been debated not only in Hawaii since the turn of the century but across the country and in other parts of the world.
The pidgin English debate surfaced again last month when national writing scores for Hawaii eighth-graders were released.
'Every time we close the door
on pidgin, we close the
door on culture.'Lois-Ann Yamanaka
HAWAII AUTHORThe disappointing results led Board of Education Chairman Mitsugi Nakashima and state Schools Superintendent Paul LeMahieu to suggest looking into whether Hawaii's pidgin English has played a role in the scores.
Pidgin English, or what experts say should be called Hawaii Creole English, is part of the culture of nearly anyone who grew up in these islands.
"It's a language of solidarity," said Alan Ramos, a Department of Education specialist in English as a second language. "It's basically one that affirms that you are from here."
But is that good or bad for island children learning to read, write and speak standard English in the public schools?
It depends on who is making the argument. Nakashima said standard English should be the norm in the classroom.
If people speak pidgin English, they will think pidgin English and will then write in pidgin English, Nakashima said.
Ebonics issues similar
But that's not necessarily so, nationally recognized experts on language say."None of us writes the way we speak," said Walter Wolfram, an associate professor of linguistics at North Carolina State University. "Record somebody who gives a talk or transcribe what someone says."
Wolfram, a member of the Linguistics Society of America, said the debate over Hawaii pidgin English is similar to the mainland controversy involving black English, or ebonics.
"I think the same issues are at stake," Wolfram said. "Do people recognize it as a legitimate language? Knowledge of pidgin should be taken into account to learn standard English. That would mean, in teaching standard English, people need to know the structures of pidgin."
The Oakland school board in 1996 recognized ebonics -- a term combining ebony and phonics -- as a separate language in trying to teach standard English.
John Rickford, a Stanford University linguistics professor, writing in "Using the Vernacular to Teach the Standard," said, "The undeniable fact ... is that most African-American children come to school fluent in the vernacular. It will emerge in the classroom, and how teachers respond to it can crucially affect how the students learn to read, and how well they master standard English," he wrote. "Ignoring or condemning the vernacular is not a particularly successful strategy ... as suggested by the massive educational failure associated with this approach nationwide."
Rickford, who could not be reached for comment, also wrote about instances from across the country -- Tennessee, Chicago, Georgia -- and in the Caribbean and in Europe, where the vernacular was taken into account in the teaching of the standard language.
