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"We affirm the students? right to their own patterns and varieties of language..."

"... the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style."

A tragically misguided ideal from 1974.

Linguistic forms, it is said, are not God-given; they are the conventional products of social/cultural habit and therefore none of them is naturally superior or uniquely ?correct.? It follows (according to this argument) that any claim of correctness is political, a matter of power not of right. ?If we teach standardized, handbook grammar as if it is the only ?correct? form of grammar, we are teaching in cooperation with a discriminatory power system? (Patricia A. Dunn and Kenneth Lindblom, English Journal, January, 2003).

That's so appallingly well-meaning of them.

Full post as published by Althouse on September 08, 2009 (boomark / email).