Historicizing the Unfulfilled Promise of the Students' Right to Their Own Language Resolution

• In Event: Reexamining the Language Rights Debate: Historical, Global, and Contemporary Perspectives

Abstract

In this presentation, I revisit the historical significance and pedagogical value of the Students’ Right to their Own Language resolution, passed in April 1974 by members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). In part, the resolution is an affirmation of the rights of students “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.” The resolution continues: “A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.” Undoubtedly, SRTOL has implications for how teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers take up language and literacy instruction in theory and practice, and for how they work with culturally and linguistically diverse students inside classrooms. The resolution highlights the importance of understanding the ever-changing sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts in which today’s students are required to learn, often under conditions defined by oppressive monocultural and monolingual expectations. What, then, are the unfulfilled promises of SRTOL? How might historicizing the resolution alongside other important historical and contemporary events (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, Open Admissions Policy, Oakland Ebonics debate, the New Jim Crow, #BlackLivesMatter movement, etc.) encourage practitioners and researchers to theorize connections among language rights, racism, and educational inequities as these pertain to Black students? To address these questions, I begin by presenting a historical perspective by which to think about SRTOL. Then, I highlight how the promise and potential of the resolution have gone largely unfulfilled within many of today’s educational contexts, mainly to the detriment of linguistically diverse Black students. In conclusion, I propose ways to historicize the resolution within contemporary educational contexts in ways that require us to adopt new approaches for affirming the rights of students to their own languages.

References (Abstract & Session Summary)

Perryman-Clark, S., Kirkland, D. & Jackson, A. (2014). Students' Right to Their Own Language: A Critical Sourcebook. New York: Bedford.

Smitherman, G. (2003). The historical struggle for language rights in CCCC. In G. Smitherman & V. Villanueva (Eds.), Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice (pp. 7-39). Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.

Smitherman, G. (1977). Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America. Detroit: Wayne State UP.

Author

• Marla Goins, Ohio State University Extension