Chapter 6: Language, Culture, and the Assessment of African American Children

In this chapter, educational psychologist and historian Asa Hilliard III explains why we cannot separate the historically oppressed status of African American children and the educational assessments used to measure their language abilities.  He begins by describing how teaching and learning are dependent upon a common language between teacher and student and how language is a feature of culture.  All cultures have language and children learn to speak the language of their culture.  Teaching and learning are also aspects of culture and therefore not exclusive to any group or groups (p. 89).

 

Hilliard discusses how teaching and learning are part of an environment influenced by politics.  Because of this influence, teaching and learning in the US has historically been rooted in a Western European dominant system.  He cites several studies that show just how pervasive the influence was in many academic disciplines.
          Africans were said by some historians to have had no  
          history, by linguists to have had inferior language, by political
          scientists to have had poor self-government, by psychologists
          to have had low intelligence, by biologists to have had
          inferior genes and by theologians to have had no soul. (p. 90)

Hilliard acknowledges that African American children are not achieving at optimal levels in school.  He goes on to say that African American children need to learn languages and content other than that which they may have learned up until now.  What he suggests is that the teaching practice and the assessment process needs to reflect the historical and cultural legacy of what African American students bring to the classroom.  Many times, when it is recognized that African American children do have a unique culture, that culture is deemed inferior to that of Western European culture.  Hilliard states that there are four areas of testing of African American students that cause gross errors--testing the mental ability, speech, language, and reading ability of these students.  He points out that these errors are made because many professionals are ignorant of basic linguistic principles and the history of American English and African American speech.

Next, Hilliard lists six misconceptions about American English; that it is:

• Immaculately conceived and is a pure language
• Superior to other languages
• A fixed or permanent language
• Essentially the same in all English-speaking countries and in the US
• Uninfluenced by African language, at least in the US
• Language, not simply a language

He points out that many Americans have not been taught even such simple things as how English came to be.  Hilliard describes how invading forces in the British Isles influenced the English language that developed. He concludes that "what is now English emerged as a polyglot language from the remnants of the language of Celts, Latin, Germanic Jutes, Angles, Saxons and finally the French." (p.93) In the very least, it could be argued that English is "non-standard German."

In the next section of the article, Hilliard describes misconceptions about African American language.  When people refer to African American language as "non-standard English", they do not recognize that it is a "fusion of languages that cannot be understood apart from an appeal to historical origins and to the oppression of slavery" (p. 94). He discusses the slave trade in the Western Hemisphere and points out that by the time many of the slaves were brought to America, they had come from Angola, Mozambique, and South East Africa--areas where the source of people was from Bantu language culture and possessed something called the "Bantu dynamic".  This dynamic influenced other languages and features of these languages were retained in the speech of the Sea Islander in South Carolina.

Also, culturally, these Bantu languages promoted oral communication and speech performances. Woven into these oral traditions were emotions tied to the humanity of the people and the culture.  These oral traditions have been past down generation to generation. Hilliard goes on to describe his experience of living in West Africa and finding evidence of these traditions in the Bantu languages of the region.  He concludes this section by pointing out that the historical, political and cultural information is important when we discover that many of the reasons African American students are labeled as "poor readers" or "dumb" or "speech impaired" are actually because they retain features of Bantu speech or speech from other African language families combine into a form of common English. He suggests that the language spoken by many African Americans should simply be considered "foreign" or "semi-foreign" and not as "deficient" or "pathological".  "The prime test of the 'normalcy'of the language of a child is to compare the child's language to the environment within which it was learned." (p. 97)  Hilliard suggests that deficiencies are in the professional preparation when they are ignorant of the African influences on language.

Next, Hilliard discusses standardized tests.  He asserts that the results of these tests favor children who speak a form of common American English and can respond to the questions that use a familiar language based upon familiar experiences. He points out some of the features of these tests and actually calls them "absurd under the light of cultural-linguistics analysis" (p. 98), namly

• 'basic word' list
• word 'difficulty'
• 'vocabulary'
• 'general information'
• standardized 'beginning and ending sounds'
• standardized 'comprehension'

Regarding the 'basic word' list, Hilliard asks the questions--what are the criteria for creating the list?--is a basic word list something all Americans use and have equal access to?--is a basic word list a random sample of all the words of the total possible vocabulary words available?--is a basic word list necessary for English speakers to communicate with one another?--can there be more than one basic word list? and so on. He poses similar questions regarding 'word difficulty' and 'vocabulary'. He does make the point that the constructs are ambiguous and arbitrary. "Therefore, the mass prodution of standardized tests and assessment procedures to measure the behaviors implied by the construct is in reality the production of mass confusion" (p. 100).

Hilliard concludes the article with these two main points:

• there is an urgent need for systematic cultural-linguistic review of all testing and assessment devices that are used with African Americans

and

• teachers must be taught so that their total orientation toward language and cultural lingustic principles represents the best we now know about teaching African American students.

This article provided me with details I hadn't considered from an historical point.  For anyone to state or to feel that any given language is "pure" and not influenced by other is not truly informed. Yet again, I ask the questions, why do most teachers not have this perspective? and why, if this research is out there and available, are not the powers that be, reconfiguring our assessment of students to benefit not only African American students, but all students?  Oh yeah, the political influence.  My thought is, those in power need to retain that power by imposing their own standards on the populace and are not about to give up the power they have attained.