Should schools attempt to tone down the amount of local dialect used by students?

Asked by: XeQM4te
  • It would be good

    I mean many yongsters these days like me for example have grown up aroung it & it has influenced them greatly.And ahs become more like a bad habit using phrases like ' i was' or 'is it' or 'you was' 'aint it miss' & i have picked this up from many of my primary teachers & cant seem to shake it of same as my consistsy of bad spellings & no full stops as teachers have never corrected me before.And now in collage i am humiliared by my lack of english language knowlaged or skills. I have never once been taught how to right an reasoned argument or even an essay or controlled assessment & so have had to learn on the internet which isnt as good as being taught by a person . & all this is because in my area the public schools are shambles and i couldnt get into any grammar or private schools because mainly of my lack of english they said they didnt want my type in there schools which was magoritly based on my dialect spoken & written. My other lesson grades were average my science & maths above average maths more i think its because not much english needed in maths. & i feel like all this could be avoided if teachers had corredted us in the past or were good themselves & im sure there are many moer students (some who left school) in my area who feel this way & in other areas

  • It would be oppressive.

    Language is entirely a social construct, with broad social implications. What practical reason could there possibly be for discouraging one's cultural way of speaking? It's "incorrect?" Who defined correct and incorrect language? You guessed it, white, male, social and economic elites who wanted to draw a clear line between "us" and "them." Can you be successful in western society nowadays if you speak in any way other than the traditional power dialect that we associate with "educated" people? No, and there's a reason for that. It helps keep social undesirables (minorities), who grow up speaking one of the various types of "broken" English, without power. If one of these undesirables manages to get past the other innumerable obstacles the elite class has left in his/her way, they must still conform to the dominant culture's way of speaking. Language has always been a tool of oppression and obstacle to opportunity.

  • No, they shouldn't.

    We live in a multicultural world, our differences rule the world and our rights are very important.
    Toning down local dialect used by students in school creates not also, a future society which each individual culture has been lost but also their unique differences that they have as human beings.

  • Heterogeneity is important.

    It is certainly important to teach students the standard form of the language they speak to ensure effective communication between members of an ethnic group, particularly those which are linguistically diverse, and to create a common identity. However, teaching the standard form and allowing local dialects to survive are not mutually exclusive; in fact, toning down the use of local dialects will lead to various detrimental effects on society as a whole.

    If schools attempt to tone down the use of local dialects, there will be bound to be opposition. In Guangdong and Hong Kong, schools which ban Cantonese in schools in favour of Putonghua are often frowned upon by the public. There's been a large-scale movement supporting Cantonese in Guangdong a few years ago (although it was suppressed). More recently, there's a been a TV programme in Guangdong interviewing a school principal who allegedly bans Cantonese in the school (although she denies having done so) - it is clear from the show that the presenter also disapproves of such a practice.

    Moreover, each region of a country has its own culture and values that are embedded inside their dialect. If schools tone down the amount of local dialect used by students, there's no doubt the decrease in its use will lead to the loss of these nuances. I'll be honest - I've seen lists of Cantonese slang expressions on Facebook. Usually, my mum knows all of them, but I only know like one out of every five...

    Finally, not every student can handle learning the standard language and the dialect at the same time. To quote what I've written in my debate with a motion similar to this topic: 'A Swedish study shows that bilingual children in Iran did better at school in the beginning, but as they aged, monolingual children overtook the bilingual ones. One of the reasons suggested was that the language which the bilingual children used at home was not used in school, leading to imbalance between the two languages.' I fear the same situation may arise if schools force students to use the standard form of the language at all times.

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Diqiucun_Cunmin says2015-01-26T02:06:22.747
A long time ago I lost a debate on this topic :P

Great to see others are on my side, though, stance-wise...
XeQM4te says2015-01-28T12:33:40.407
It is impressive I can tell. Would you like to leave an opinion? I really must understand why people tend to ignore or not their entities.