Since our Idiocracy-bent dumb-down specialists even claim that expecting the right answer in math is a Caucasian norm, it’s no surprise the same mentality is being applied to English. To wit:
“An Arizona State University Associate Dean penned a 358-page book detailing how grading student’s writing is a form of racism and white supremacy,” reports Daily Wire.
The site continues:
“In a book titled ‘Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom,’ professor Asao Inoue encourages teachers to ditch grading for a “labor-based” grading system wherein students earn grades based on their effort. The quality of a student’s writing would not help or hinder their course grade.
“This book focuses on one kind of grading contract, one that calculates final course grades purely by the labor students complete, not by any judgments of the quality of their writing,” Inoue writes. “While the qualities of student writing is [sic] still at the center of the classroom and feedback, it has no bearing on the course grade.”
…“Grading literacy performances by a single standard for so-called quality is racist and promotes white language supremacy,” the author writes. “Because all grading and assessment exist within systems that uphold singular, dominant standards that are racist, and White supremacist when used uniformly. This problem is present in any grading system that incorporates a standard, no matter who is judging, no matter the particulars of the standard.”
Uh-huh.
Now, commentator Andrea Widburg provides some historical perspective. “In the 1970s, ‘Ebonics’ was the allegedly natural language of Black Americans,” she writes. “My father strongly objected to having Black students in his district taught in Ebonics. The only teacher in his district who supported him was an elderly Black woman who accurately said Ebonics would permanently relegate Blacks to an economic ghetto. Given how awful Ebonics was, it’s inevitable that it’s back” — with a vengeance.
There’s much to unpack here. First, it’s ironic (or is it?) that as with Marxism, Inoue’s focus is on labor. And this focus on “‘labor-based’ grading,” he admits, “is rooted in critical race theory,” the Wire also informs.
This again reminds me of Chesterton’s observation that in schools today, students must submit to theories younger than they are. It also reflects a lack of wisdom and the epitome of anti-intellectualism.
Are we children? Apparent here is the same phenomenon evident when canceling Dr. Seuss or toppling statues. Critical-race theory is, relatively speaking, not that old. Yet we see supposedly “educated” people far and wide, in academia and media and entertainment and politics, reflexively jumping on its bandwagon simply because some academic, somewhere not long ago said it was a good idea.
Whatever happened to “Haste makes waste,” “Look before you leap,” and “Count to 10 and take a deep breath before acting”? Children are prone to rapid change, flights of fancy, to falling for fashions. Adults are supposed to be more mature and circumspect.
But, of course, an operative principle here when the dumb-down agenda is calculated is different: It’s Rahm Emanuel’s “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Then there’s money and fame.
I don’t know if Inoue believes his drivel. But many today (Robin “White Fragility” DiAngelo, I’m looking at you) understand that you get rich playing to fashions, not facts. “What of Truth?” you ask.
“Isn’t that the thing they were talking about thousands of years ago already and that’s the same all the time? That Truth stuff is boring! We want the shiny new thang!” (This explains my finances, mind you.) That’s the thinking, anyway, especially in this relativistic age.
Unfortunately, what makes the dumb-down opportunists rich makes others dumb. And when did we ever before pander to anomalous English usage? Did we ever call redneck-speak “Redonics” and claim that correcting it was some kind of genteel-society bigotry?
This point is more relevant than you know. The term “Ebonics,” a combination of “Ebony” and “phonics” that originated in 1975, may be used to describe what’s called “black ‘English.’” But is it really that?
Note here that in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Professor Thomas Sowell points out that this “style” of speech can be traced back 500 years to Britain and that even then its users were called “rednecks” and “crackers.” In other words, Ebonics is appropriated Redonics (and it’s all quite moronic).
Whatever you call it, the deeper issue is that dumbing-down standards hurts the entire society. Oh, it is correct saying that unlike math — which, since it involves truths, was discovered and not really invented —language styles are largely man’s handiwork. Moreover, since the United States has nothing tantamount to the “French Academy,” which establishes French’s official rules, our language is governed only by conventions. Yet they still matter — immensely.
Question: Why is it that people in India have made English, the tongue of those who once conquered them, their official co-national language (along with Hindi)? They understand a simple truth: Truly being one people requires having a common language.
Note here that having two official national tongues is perhaps the best the Indians could do, as in their nation are spoken more than 250 different languages and dialects. But where they started out linguistically balkanized (far more than we ever did), we’re now choosing that path.
The more we have a common language spoken a common way, the more united we’ll be, all other things being equal. Dispense with standards, however, and over time we could conceivably descend into a Tower of Babel situation. This is traditionally considered a curse.
For this reason, this attack on English standards constitutes a war on America. Yet as with the Democrats’ current “crime” bill and Critical Race Theory training, it’s also part of the Left’s War on Blacks.
That is to say, as with the “Black National Anthem” and describing blacks with a term referencing a different continent (“African-American”), encouraging them to speak “their own language” is divisive and reinforces the idea that they’re not really part of the United States, that they’re a nation within a nation.
In fact, with the way leftists’ mask has been dropping, we could wonder: When will they begin being honest with themselves and others, take their thinking to its logical conclusion, and just propose dividing the country?
