Postmodern and Post-Postmodern Rhetoric

Do alternative discourses have a place in the classroom?

This chapter used a lot of words to describe a somewhat common problem in the American education system: people have lots of great ideas about what needs to/should be done, but have no clue as to how to implement them.

In my Studies in Literacy course, we just read a piece on Spanglish and its place in the classroom. The author argued that students should be able to use a combination of English and Spanish on a variety of assignments throughout the school year. We discussed this in class and I think it meshes very well with today's readings, especially with the segment on alternative writing styles. While I was reading, I was appalled to see that some teachers accept WRitInG tHat LooKS lIKe thIs in their classrooms. However, I was less appalled to read that some teachers accepted a comination of English & Spanish. Why is this? Perhaps because I see Spanish as a more accepted discourse, or at least a more widely used one. I might even say that I'm fearful of looking discrimanatory if I reject Spanish, but don't have that same worry when I reject ThIS tyPe oF WRitINg.

Either way, it is one thing to say that those forms of literacy have a place in the classroom but another to actually give them that space. How would a first-grade teacher, to whom simple things like capitalization and spelling are paramount, grade an assignment on which the student switches between Spanish and English or mixes capital and lower case letters? If the teacher doesn't know Spanish, she would have no idea how to correct the Spanish words, or have no idea if a seemingly improperly spelled English word is actually a Spanish one. She would be forced to give up on correcting capitalization altogethether! So, in a first-grade environment, accepting alternate discourses just seems like too much of a hassle. After all, you have to learn the rules before you can break them, right?

Perhaps in a classroom of older children or college students alternative discourses may have a place. At that point, hopefully students have learned the 'correct' (standard English) way to write, and can then be given more leeway in their writing style. Perhaps Spanish words can be put in italics, and teachers don't really have to worry about capitalization anymore. I might even go so far as to say that allowing teachers to completely take their focus off of such mundane things as spelling and capitalization might give them more freedom to speak to students about the theme, genre, and audience of their writing -- the more important things, in my opinion.

So, where do we draw the line?