46

English as a Second & Indigenous Educational Attainment in Canada: A Call to Action

 Jonathan J. Life

Some students in Canada, most relevantly some Indigenous students, speak English as their first language, yet have grown up using a non-standard variation of it. As a result, these individuals have more in common with students attempting to learn English as a second language than with students who have grown up speaking English with a standard dialect. Current educational practice uses first-language education methods for these students, which can be inefficient for their learning. In particular, many English second-dialect speaking children can be misdiagnosed with learning disabilities and placed in special education programs in an effort to help address their language difficulties. When confronted with a student struggling to acquire an unfamiliar dialect, many educators may see special education as the only tool available. In addition to wasting money, misdiagnoses of learning disabilities can negatively affect both the learning and the self-image of the student misdiagnosed. Since many English second dialect speakers in Canada are Indigenous, this problem may disproportionately affect Indigenous children, thus widening Canada’s educational attainment inequity. This paper suggests an alternative educational policy direction. It advocates the use of second-language education methods in the teaching of second-dialect speaking students. This policy would offer a more psychologically accurate approach and thus would likely decrease economic wastefulness and increase educational effectiveness. In the context of the significant inequities in Indigenous educational attainment in Canada, this paper proposes a clear, practical policy direction that could be implemented across Canadian provinces (where applicable) and could effect an immediate tangible improvement for Indigenous students’ learning.

Method This paper draws heavily on the fields of , sociolinguistics and speech-language pathology. Where concepts

47 may be vague or unfamiliar to the general public I clarify them in plain terms. Since relatively little has been written on the connections between linguistics and public policy, I have found it necessary to include some older sources. As a rule, most of the older sources relate to historical precedent for the connection between non-standard dialect and public education policy, especially to Black English in U.S. education in particular. For all Canadian- and Indigenous-specific arguments I have provided the most up-to-date sources available. Largely everything that has been written on the connection of non-standard dialect to education has been written by linguists, sociolinguists and speech-language pathologists1. The primary ambition of this paper is thus to translate the findings of these language scientists and practitioners to a simplified and concise form accessible to government and policy professionals. In addition, I aim to elucidate the unique challenges of Indigenous second-dialect education in Canada, and to create a blueprint for a policy implementation process for moving forward. While I believe this paper offers a positive way forward for Canadian education policy, I also must be clear about the limits of its scope. While Indigenous self-governance is a crucial concept for long-term Indigenous education policy, I do not directly apply this concept in the methodology of this paper2. The paper, rather, works purely in a provincial-government-based policy framework. The reason for this scope restriction is absolutely not to downplay the importance of Indigenous self-governance. The choice to work in a short-term provincial framework comes simply from an analysis of my own competencies, together with a belief that the ideas here proposed offer a chance for real, positive changes that could be implemented practically immediately. Planning a trip to the grocery store tomorrow needn’t rule out a trip to Tokyo next year.

1 The one exception to this is the statistical work of Battisti et al 2011 on second- dialect education in British Columbia, which is also highly technical. 2 For related work discussing community-researcher-practitioner partnerships please see Ball and Bernhardt 2008, and Hart-Blundon 2016.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 48

Indigenous Education Statistics As last recorded in 2011, the number of Canadians with an Indigenous identity is 1,400,685. This is approximately 4% of the overall population. This percentage is likely to grow, as Indigenous people continue to be younger, on average, than the general population. Forty-six percent of Indigenous people in Canada are under twenty-five years old (National Household Survey 2011). The problematic history of colonialism together with these growth- rate demographics give us strong reason to be concerned about Indigenous educational attainment in Canada. Without policy action, the issue will only grow. In Canadian government-determined standards, there is significant inequity in educational attainment between Indigenous people and the rest of Canada3. Twenty-nine percent of working- age Indigenous Canadians has not completed high school, compared to only 12% of working-age non-Indigenous Canadians. Less than half (48%) of working-age Indigenous Canadians has post-secondary qualification of some kind, while this is the case for almost one third (65%) of non-Indigenous Canadians. Lastly, 10% of Indigenous Canadians has a university degree, compared to 26% of the non-Indigenous population (National Household Survey 2011). There are many factors that likely contribute to this inequity. These factors include colonialism and poverty (Ball 2007), negative effects of residential school (Schissel and Wotherspoon 2003) including trauma (Bombay, Matheson and Anisman 2009), and a failure to promote literacy in a culturally appropriate context (Ball 2007). The situation with Indigenous educational attainment in Canada is complex. To present the relevance of one causal factor at issue is not to dismiss the relevance of any other. In what follows, I present the case that one relevant causal factor in Indigenous educational attainment is a failure of recognition that many Indigenous children are second-dialect users of the variant of English used for classroom instruction. Emphasizing this factor has the prospect for a practical implementation process that could

3 A potential weakness in government educational statistics is that they do not take account of the transfer of traditional Indigenous Knowledge. A longer-term policy direction might involve finding ways to remedy this.

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 49 bring real, tangible progress.

What is a Nonstandard Dialect, and Why Might it Matter? To understand the concept of a nonstandard dialect, first one must understand the distinction between linguistic prescription and description. A prescriptive conception of a language is about how one ‘should’ use a language. Following a prescriptive grammar and vocabulary is thus ‘correct’ language use. Prescriptive conceptions of language are determined by society at large, particularly by groups in prestige positions, such as teachers, professors and other educated professionals. In all likelihood, no individual person perfectly speaks a prescriptive language. A descriptive conception of a language, conversely, is about how a person uses a language as a matter of fact. Following a descriptive grammar is merely systematic language use: repeatedly applying a given set of rules in one’s speech. To use an analogy, a descriptive conception of language is more like physics than it is like ethics; it is not about how language should be, but simply about how it is. For a speaker4 of a standard dialect, one’s own descriptive language and one’s society’s prescriptive language5 largely overlap. A standard-dialect speaker, that is, someone who uses descriptive psycholinguistic rules that are largely equivalent to the prescriptive linguistic rules her society considers ‘correct6.’ Speakers of a standard dialect will thus generally speak in accordance with dictionaries and grammar books (Trudgill 1999), as well as with the linguistic norms followed by those of perceived status (Wolfram and Christian 1989). For a speaker of a non-standard dialect, however, one’s own descriptive language and one’s society’s prescriptive language are significantly divergent. This means the speaker’s descriptive psycholinguistic rules are importantly different from the prescriptive linguistic rules her society considers ‘correct.’

4 I emphasize linguistic speech and speakers in this paper, but for the most part all relevant considerations also apply to linguistic writing and writers. 5 For simplicity I use the singular ‘language’ here, though of course both an individual and a society may be multi-lingual. 6 “Correctness’ is put in quotes to indicate that it is determined by power, not by logic.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 50

Nonstandard break from the standard for various reasons. Sometimes influence on the from an ancestral language causes a dialect break (Leap 1993). Other times parents learn a second language without formal instruction and pass that language to their children. The children in turn fill in the holes in grammatical structure (Ball et al. 2007). Such linguistic changes can become cemented as unique community dialects in any cases where the community is in some way isolated, either geographically (Ball et al. 2007), economically (Rickford et al. 2015), or socially (Holmes 2008). It is important to emphasize that nonstandard dialects have complete grammatical rules and use conventions just like standard dialects (Fought 2006; Labov 1982). Grammatical analogies between nonstandard and standard dialects make this point clear. Of the grammar of the phrase ‘they mine’ in Black English, for example, Labov writes that “we know that there are many languages of the world which do not have a present copula, and which conjoin subject and predicate complement without a verb,” and he stresses, rhetorically, that “Russian, Hungarian and Arabic may be foreign; but they are not by that same token illogical (Labov 1969, 202). In fact, Labov continues, one doesn’t even need to venture overseas for the needed grammatical analogy. The deletion of the ‘is’ or ‘are,’ he writes:

follows the same regular rules as contraction. Whenever Standard English can contract, Negro [Africa American] children use either the contracted form or (more commonly) the deleted zero form. Thus ‘they mine’ corresponds to the standard ‘they’re mine’, not to the full form ‘they are mine’. On the other hand, no such deletion is possible in positions where standard English cannot contract: just as one cannot say ‘that’s what they’re’ in standard English, ‘that’s what they’ is equally impossible [in Black English] (Labov 1969, 203).

Speakers of nonstandard dialects, then, are at a disadvantage, not because of inherent limitations of their own language, (or any other intellectual limitations associated with nonstandard dialect use [Campbell, Dollaghan, Needleman an Janosky 1997; Fletcher

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 51

1983; Rodekohr and Haynes 2001]), but simply due to the divergence of their language from the society’s prescriptive norms. The point here is not to make a grand claim of societal injustice, but rather to isolate a problem. There is significant evidence many Indigenous children in Canada are speakers of a non-standard English dialect (Ball and Bernhardt 2008; Battisti, Friesen and Krauth 2014; Eriks-Brophy 2014; Heit and Blair 1993; Kay-Raining Bird 2014; Wiltse 2011). Further, language variation scholars broadly agree that children who speak nonstandard dialects are at an educational disadvantage in schools (E.g. Fletcher 1983 on English as spoken by “American Indians”; Labov 1982 and 2003 on African American English [AAE]; Malcolm 1995 on Australian Aboriginal English [AE]). It would seem, then, that linguistic dialect might be one causal factor among others relevant to reducing inequity in Indigenous educational attainment in Canada. Below I describe some types of linguistic differences in relation to which Indigenous children in Canada may be systematically disadvantaged.

Linguistic Differences The central linguistic differences between standard and nonstandard dialects can be broken into three broad categories: grammatical differences; sound differences; and discourse- differences. These, in turn, present three categories of related challenges: cognitive assessment and logical teaching challenges; auditory assessment and associated reading challenges; and general cultural pedagogical challenges.

Grammatical Differences Grammatical differences often correspond to logical differences in structuring thoughts. In Tsimshian English, ‘them’ (apparently influenced by the Tsimshian plural marker ‘dim’) is used as a marker tying a specific individual with others associated with that individual, as in ‘don’t play with them John’ and ‘them Fred’s having a party tonight’ (Tarpent 1982, 118). One can translate the Tsimshian English’s ‘them’ as (loosely) ‘and the acquaintances of.’ One who is not familiar with the unique logic of this dialect, however, is likely to see such sentences as simply

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 52

erratic misuse of Standard English’s ‘them,’ though it is in fact used systematically and consistently. Similarly, in Cheyenne English there is a verb marker (often, but not in all cases) in the form of a suffix ‘-ed’ that distinguishes concrete, manifest actions such as kicking from abstract, non-manifest actions such as maturing (Alford, 1974: 6). Thus, for Standard English ‘I run’ in present tense, a speaker of Cheyenne English will say ‘I runned.’ Again, one who is not familiar with the unique logic of this dialect is likely to read this as a misuse of past tense, when in fact the ‘ed’ in this case has an entirely different meaning. Since conventional standards for logical thought are based in Standard English, failure to recognise these types of logical differences can lead to the misdiagnosis of nonstandard-dialect-speaking children as learning impaired (Labov 1982).

Sound Differences To understand the sound differences between dialects, it is important to understand the basics of linguistic sounds. While the physical space of possible sounds is continuous, hearing recognition of specific linguistic sounds is discrete, and it is this discrete recognition that determines what a language’s basic sounds are (Leiberman and Blumstein 1988). While, in the physical sense, there is a continuum of possible sounds between [p] and [b], for example, a Standard English hearer will perceive any sound produced in this continuum as one or the other7. Crucially, sounds differentiated in one language need not be differentiated in another. The distinction between [b] and [v] heard in Standard English, for example, is not heard in Standard Spanish; the determination of linguistic sounds through discrete perception is thus language specific (Durand 1990). This basic understanding of the language specificity of linguistic sounds allows for perhaps the clearest example of how dialect difference can be mistaken for disability. In the Ann Arbor ‘Black English Trial’ of 1977 (which will be discussed in the policy

7 As it happens, articulations with a delay before phonation shorter than 25 milliseconds are perceived as [b] while otherwise equivalent articulations with a delay before phonation longer than 25 milliseconds are perceived as [p] (Leiberman and Blumstein 1988, 197).

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 53 section of this paper), the Ann Arbor School Board’s use of the Wepman test to diagnose hearing disability was a key example of unintended discrimination against Black-English-speaking students. As Labov writes:

The speech therapists weren't aware that the Wepman test included a number of oppositions that are mergers in the Black English : pin vs. pen, sheaf vs. sheath, clothe vs. clove, and so forth. These facts and the consequent misreporting of the hearing abilities of normal black children have been made available since I965. Yet tests such as these continue to be used with consequent misreporting of the hearing abilities of normal black children (Labov 1982, 168-9).

This is a clear example of the relevance of linguistic knowledge to education policy. While there is cause for regret for those who have been disadvantaged due to their dialect, there is also cause for optimism for the future. As the components of the challenge to Indigenous educational equity go, the potential for a knowledge- gathering solution to the dialect discrimination component may be relatively straightforward. Consider the connection between the sound system of a student’s dialect and how that student will best acquire literacy skills. A Black-English-speaking student who pronounces ‘people’ as ‘peopuw,’ will have a harder time making sense of the spelling of this word than will a Standard-English-speaking student (Labov 2003, 130). On reflection, this is somewhat common sense, but research also supports it. When Black-English-speaking students drop sounds from Standard English words, as in ‘left’ pronounced as ‘lef,’ the corresponding letters are also left off in their spelling of these words (Cronnel 1984). Likewise, when Black English students substitute sounds in words of Standard English, as in ‘lid’ as ‘lit,’ the corresponding letter also analogously gets mixed up in their spelling (Treiman and Bowman 2015). Blunden has observed similar spelling patterns in Indigenous students in northern British Columbia; she summarizes that “children who speak a nonstandard dialect have more difficulty learning to read because their dialect affects their ability to map sounds to letters, making

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 54

the task complexity greater than it is for students who speak the standard” (Blunden 2016, 222). Recognizing that dialectical patterns affect spelling and reading challenges in a systematic way, however, gives a clear knowledge-gathering direction for remedying these challenges.

Discourse Differences A final, less technical set of linguistic differences, particularly relevant for Canadian Indigenous students, is that of discourse-style differences. Discourse-related features key to dialect description of Indigenous English dialects in Canada include differences in the use of silence, listening, eye-contact behaviours, turn-taking, and topic development in narratives (Ball et al. 2006, 101–103). The verbal participation frameworks learned by Indigenous children are often very different from those learned by non-Indigenous children. As Ball and Bernhardt write, “the use of silence by First Nations children… may be interpreted by mainstream teachers as shyness or even lack of knowledge” (Ball and Bernhardt 2008, 580). In respect to eye contact, one Indigenous doctor in a forum study said:

I think I tend to look at someone in the eyes initially, as we start the interaction, because when you look in someone’s eyes, right away you get the sense of honesty and truthfulness and openness. Then as they’re talking, I tend to look away, and I’m visualizing what they’re saying. I’m also visualizing in order to process, and take meaning from what they’ve just shared, so that I can respond. But you know it can be seen as a disorder these days with all the focus on PDD [Pervasive Developmental Disorder] and autism. I have seen preschool children who’ve been referred to me by a paediatrician because they think they might have some symptoms of autism because they do not look at them when they’re spoken to (Ball et al. 2006, 49).

As with grammatical differences and with sound differences, recognition of discourse differences between Standard English and Indigenous dialects of English is important in order to avoid

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 55 the misdiagnosis of disabilities. In addition to the more technical understanding of the grammar and sound system of a given dialect, a broader cultural understanding of the way a speaker or community uses its dialect is relevant.

Policy Direction Nonstandard dialect as a causal factor in educational attainment inequity was first brought to public light in the Ann Arbor ‘Black English Trial’ of 1977, where parents of Black- English-speaking children complained of racial discrimination in the form of dialect discrimination on the part of the school board. The judge’s verdict was delivered on July 12, 1979, directing “the Ann Arbor School Board to submit to him within thirty days a plan defining the exact steps to be taken to help the teachers (1) to identify children speaking Black English, and (2) to use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read Standard English” (Labov 1982, 193)8. While the notion of legal precedent of course does not hold across national borders, the basic blueprint for a way forward offers a helpful policy precedent for the Canada case. A layer of complexity in the Canadian context is that there is likely more than one dialect that must be considered. We should change step (1) therefore to: (1*) identify groups of children speaking a non-standard dialect of English. ‘Groups’ is inserted for the pragmatic reason that significant numbers of students must benefit from a program in order to justify any necessary funding, and also for the logical reason that dialects are unlikely to persist without a group setting to maintain them. Though I will discuss further difficulties impeding implementation, I think the evidence provided thus far gives good reason to support steps (1*) and (2) as a general policy direction for dealing with one causal factor in Indigenous educational attainment in Canada. I will present further evidence in the evaluation section.

8 “After a long debate,” Labov continues, “the Ann Arbor School Board decided by a narrow vote not to appeal the decision…. [The case] therefore stands as a decision in this Federal District Court that may be cited in other cases where parents have reason to think that there is a language barrier between their children and the standard language of the school” (Labov 1982, 193).

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 56

Implementation Since regular classroom assessment is conducted in Standard English, the general method for identifying students disadvantaged by their dialect must involve: (a) some verbal- competency assessment tool that does not discriminate based on dialect; and (b) a comparison of the results of that assessment tool with the results of regular classroom assessment. Obviously (a) is the complicated component in this, but the following two options are potentially available:

Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation This tool attempts to correct for dialect discrimination by emphasizing linguistic elements shared by different dialects of English (Seymour, Roeper and DeVilliers 2003). A disadvantage of this tool in the Canadian context at the moment is that it has only been successfully designed in relation to African-American dialects of English (Ball and Bernhardt 2008). Future advancement of the tool to incorporate Indigenous-Canadian dialects, though, could be examined.

Dynamic Assessment This tool assesses a child’s learning capability by comparing unassisted linguistic development with adult-assisted linguistic development (Gutiérrez-Clellen and Peña 2001). In comparing the child’s unassisted linguistic development with her adult-assisted linguistic development, the tool assesses the child’s “learning strategies and styles rather than their knowledge of any specific of English” (Ball and Bernhardt 2008, 583). Practitioners have demonstrated that the tool is effective for assessing speakers of various nonstandard English dialects in America (Lidz and Peña 1996; Ukrainetz, Harpell, Walsh and Coyle 2000). Its development to assess Indigenous-English dialects in Canada is thus another possibility. When it comes to implementation, however, a serious complication in drawing an analogy from the Black English trial in the United States is the comparative lack of knowledge of Indigenous-English dialects in Canada. Battisti et al site the “paucity of research on First Nations Englishes in Canada,” and ask, reasonably, “how can we designate a student if we do not

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 57 know what the community dialectal features are?” (Battisti et al 2011, 228). Indeed, even the small amount of research that exists about Indigenous English dialects in Canada may be out-dated (Eriks-Brophy 2014). One potential solution to this lack of research could be language sample analysis that could help develop a standard reference set on a given Indigenous English dialect. This tool, as Ball and Bernhardt describe, involves speech samples being “collected by SLPs [speech-language pathologists] or community members from a range of naturalistic discourse contexts… including play, conversation, and story-telling,” ideally by videotape to allow for “a better understanding of the many contextual factors that may influence speech, and to allow for the analysis of verbal and non-verbal communication, both of which are integral aspects of language use9” (Ball and Bernhardt 2008, 583-4). For implementation, collecting information on the dialect in question is insufficient. It is also necessary to teach that information to teachers so they have the resources to teach Standard English as a second dialect, rather than only as a first dialect. Teachers’ knowledge of the nonstandard dialect of their students and their ability to contrast it with the standard is essential to avoiding unintentionally disadvantaging the learning of those students. Through this knowledge and ability, teachers can recognize, without judgement, the grammar, sound and discourse system of each student’s dialect, and equitably teach literacy in a way accessible to all. As will be discussed in conclusion, this aspect of the policy process can be seen as part of a decolonialization education framework. A decolonialization attitude, I will argue, is relevant to effective educational service delivery.

British Columbia’s English as a Second Dialect Program Evaluation The policy direction proposed here actually has positive precedent in at least one Canadian province. This allows the luxury, to a certain extent, of evaluation in advance. Most of the

9 As was noted in addressing discourse differences earlier in this proposal.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 58

remainder of this paper will describe the evaluative findings of (Battisti et al 2011) on the effects of supplementary second- language education funding to school boards in British Columbia. Since the 1980s British Columbia has funded specialized services for students whose first dialect is a nonstandard dialect of English, the majority of whom are Indigenous students. The policy is under B.C.’s English as a Second Language framework and offers $1,340 in potential extra funding for the services of any student who “speak(s) variations of English that differ significantly from the English used in the broader Canadian society and in school,” including the payments of E.S.L. specialists for service planning and delivery (B.C. Ministry of Education 1999). Methods of service delivery included pedagogical strategies for developing vocabulary (Nechako-Lakes 2006), the hiring of specialist teachers to help develop learning materials (Cariboo-Chilcotin 2009), specializing oral language instruction and supplying reading materials with culturally relevant Indigenous content (Vancouver Island North 2008), and strategies to fit oral language traditions into the standard literacy programs (Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte 2008). Though the reasons are unclear, many more B.C. school districts started to make use of this additional second-language funding in the late 1990s. Between 1999 and 2004, the proportion of Indigenous students designated for E.S.L. funding tripled (Battisti et al 2011, 192). Battisti et al thus evaluate the effectiveness of this B.C. policy by calculating “how year-to-year changes in the size of ESL enrolment of Aboriginal students within school districts affected achievement,” comparing districts to themselves over time rather than districts to each other, so as to separate “the effect of the supplementary funding from other things that can affect achievement, and that may vary across districts” (Battisti et al 2011, 194). In other words, on a certain year, a given district will have a given number of Indigenous students on English-as-a-second-dialect funding, and will also have average standardized reading test scores; later, at future given year, that district will have a different, larger number of Indigenous students on English-as-a-second-dialect funding, and will also have a different set of average standardized reading test scores; these two variables at these two times are what Battisti et al compare. Here is what they write of their results:

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 59

The results suggest that ESL funding for Aboriginal students who speak non-standard English has been used in B.C. to support services that are notably effective… The estimated effect was quite substantial. If a district designated 22 per cent of its Aboriginal students for ESL funding, the average rate across districts over the time period studied, it would have increased the reading test score gain of Aboriginal students by around 0.11 standard deviations compared to a district with no students designated. This corresponds to 18 per cent of B.C.’s grade 7 reading gap between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal students (Battisti et al 2011, 194-195).

The effectiveness of B.C.’s funding policy for English-as-second- dialect students suggests that the causal factor identified in this proposal is relevant in Indigenous educational inequity in Canada, and, indeed, is a factor policymakers can effectively and tangibly remedy. Further verification in Battisti et al’s evaluation comes from the fact that no significant changes were discovered in the test scores of non-targeted students (2011, 195). This verifies that the causal factor of dialect is indeed what is being remedied. As Battisti et al conclude, “the findings should be of considerable interest to policy makers in any jurisdiction who are concerned with improving the educational outcomes of vulnerable groups of students, particularly those from communities that speak non- standard English dialects” (196). Benefits must of course be considered against costs, but as long as education boards can cost-effectively implement the language sample analysis and diagnostic evaluation of language variation and/or dynamic assessment discussed above, the policy direction of identifying groups of children speaking a non-standard dialect of English and using that knowledge in teaching these children to learn Standard English is well supported. In terms of cost-benefit analysis, one must note that, due to the misdiagnosis of disabilities that can result from the failure to recognise nonstandard dialects, much of the money spent on English as a second dialect will be money saved on special education. Since the same money can lead to

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 60

greater effectiveness, second-dialect education is a wise investment.

Concluding Remarks on Outcomes and Process It has been by design that this proposal has avoided the more philosophical critiques of dialect discrimination (e.g. Lippi- Green 199710). Granted: sometimes dialect discrimination consists, not merely in a lack of knowledge, but is a guise for direct racism. The problem of racial prejudice as a common psychological attitude goes well beyond the present paper’s scope. What I have done here is to isolate the aspect of linguistic dialect discrimination that may be immediately addressed through a specific and implementable policy solution. An objection may be that I have failed to address the fact that standardized educational outcomes remain measured in Standard English. Long term, a self-governance framework could create more truly decolonialized outcomes in this respect. One should also note, however, that outcomes are not the only place where linguistic decolonialization can play a role. A decolonial attitude in the policy process is a means both of addressing the more philosophical concerns about discrimination, and also of effectively reaching the more subdued policy outcome of educational equity as measured by Standard English test scores. As Labov writes:

The teacher’s attitude towards the child is an important factor in his success or failure… when the everyday language of Negro [African American; or, in the present case, Indigenous] children is stigmatized as ‘not a language at all’ and ‘not possessing the means for logical thought’, the effect of such labelling is repeated many times during each day of the school year. Every time that a child uses a form… without the copula or with negative concord, he will be

10 “Many individuals who consider themselves democratic, even-handed, rational and free of prejudice, hold on tenaciously to a standard ideology [about language] which attempts to justify rejection of the other because of race, ethnicity, or other facets of identity that would otherwise be called racism” (73-4).

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 61

labelling himself for the teacher’s benefit as ‘illogical’, as a ‘nonconceptual thinker’ (Labov 1969, 206).

Crucial to the educational attainment of nonstandard-dialect- speaking children is the daily recognition from those involved in their education that, even if it is not the dialect of instruction, their own dialect is also not ‘wrong’ or ‘illogical.’ Since increasing student self-confidence is a means to increasing learning, a decolonial attitude in service delivery is both causally relevant and needed. It is my hope that I have supported this attitude in this proposal, and that it can be applied both in education policy development and in the day-to-day teaching of nonstandard- dialect-speaking children in Canada.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 62

Bibliography

Alford, D. 1974. The Cheyenne dialect of English and its educational implications. Montana: Northern Cheyenne Bilingual Program. Ball, Jessica. 2007. Aboriginal young children’s language and literacy development: progress, promising practices, and needs. British Columbia: Canadian Language and Literacy Research Networked Centre of Excellence. Ball, Jessica, B. May Bernhardt, and J. Deby, 2006. First Nations English dialects: Exploratory project proceedings, unpublished monograph. British Columbia: University of Victoria and University of British Columbia. Ball, Jessica, B. May Bernhardt, and J. Deby, 2007. First Nations English dialects. Exploratory project proceedings. Vancouver, BC: First Nations English Dialect Project, UBC. Ball, Jessica, and B. May Bernhardt. 2008. “First Nations English dialects in Canada: Implications for speech-language pathology.” Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 22 (8), 570- 588. Battisti, Michele, Jane Friesen, and Brian Krauth. 2014. “English as a second dialect policy and achievement of Aboriginal students in British Columbia.” Canadian Public Policy 40 (2), 182–192. Battisti, Michele, Mark Campbell, Jane Friesen, and Brian Krauth. 2011. “Non-Standard English Dialects and the Effect of Supplementary Funding on Educational Achievement.” Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology 35 (2), 190-197. Bombay, Amy, Kim Matheson, and Hymie Anisman. 2009. “Intergenerational trauma: Convergence of multiple processes among first nations peoples in Canada.” Journal De La Santé Autochtone 5 (3), 6-47. Campbell, Thomas, Chris Dollaghan, Herbert Needleman, and Janine Janosky. 1997. “Reducing bias in language assessment: Processing-dependent measures.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40 (3), 519-525. Durand, Jacques 1990. Generative and Non-linear Phonology. London, UK: Routledge.

63

Eriks-Brophy, Alice. 2014. “Assessing the language of Canadian Aboriginal children: Towards a more culturally valid approach.” Canadian Journal of Speech- Language Pathology and Audiology 38 (2), 152–173. Fought, Carmen. 2006. Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fletcher, J. 1983. “What problems do American Indians have with English?” Journal of American Indian Education 23 (1), 1-14. Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera F., and Elizbety Peña. 2001. “Dynamic assessment of diverse children: a tutorial.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 32, 212–224. Hart-Blundon, Patricia 2016. “Nonstandard Dialect and Educational Achievement: Potential Implications for First Nations Students.” Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology (CJSLPA) 40 (3), 218-231. Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte School District No. 50. 2008. British Columbia: Achievement Contract. Queen Charlotte, B.C. Heit, M., and H. Blair. 1993. “Language needs and characteristics of Saskatchewan Indian and Metis students: Implications for educators.” In S. V. Morris, K. A. McLeod, and M. Danesi (Eds.), Aboriginal languages and education: The Canadian experience, 103-128. Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press. Holmes, Janet. 2008. An introduction to Sociolinguistics. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth. 2014. “A resource kit to assist speech- language pathologists and audiologists in providing informed services to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people.” Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology 38 (2), 238–250. Labov, William 1969. The Logic of Nonstandard English. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown U School of Languages and Linguistics. ––. 1982. “Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: The case of the Black English trial in Ann Arbor.” Language in Society 11 (2), 165-201. ––. 2003. “When ordinary children fail to read.” Reading Research Quarterly 38 (1), 128-131. Labov, William, and Bettina Baker. 2010. “What is a reading error?” Applied Psycholinguistics 31 (4), 735-757.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy 64

Leap, William. 1993. American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Lidz, Carol S., and Elizabeth D. Peña. 1996. “Dynamic assessment: the model, its relevance as a nonbiased approach, and its application to Latino American preschool children.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in the Schools 27, 367–372. Lieberman, Philip, and Sheila Blumstein. 1988. Speech Physiology, Speech Perception, and Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York, NY: Routledge. Rickford, John R., Greg J. Duncan, Lisa A. Gennetian, Ray Yun Gou, Rebecca Greene, Lawrence F. Katz, Ronald C. Kessler, Jeffrey R. Kling, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Andres E. Sanchez-Ordoñez, Matthew Sciandra, Ewart Thomas, and Jens Ludwig. 2015. “Neighborhood effects on use of African-American Vernacular English.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (38), 11817-11822. Rodekohr, Rachel K., and William O. Haynes. 2001. “Differentiating dialect from disorder: A comparison of two processing tasks and a standardized language test.” Journal of Communication Disorders 34 (3), 255-272. Schissel, Bernard and Terry Wotherspoon. 2003. “The legacy of residential schools.” In B. Schissel and T. Wotherspoon (Eds.), The legacy of school for Aboriginal people, 35-65. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. Seymour, Harry, Thomas Roeper, and Jill DeVilliers. 2003. Diagnostic evaluation of language variation. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation. Tarpent, M.-L. 1982. “A Tsimshian English expression: ‘Them Fred’.” In H. G. Bartelt, S. Penfield-Jasper, and B. Hoffer (Eds.), Essays in Native American English, 113–121. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press. The Educational Attainment of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (2011). National Household Survey (NHS), Statistics Canada: Catalogue no. 99-012-X2011003. (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/99- 012-x2011003_3-eng.pdf)

Volume 5 – Fall 2018 65

Treiman, Rebecca, and Margo Bowman. 2015. “Spelling in African American children: The case of final consonant devoicing.” Reading and Writing, 1013–1028. Trudgill, Peter. 1999. “Standard English: What it isn’t.” In T. Bex, and R. J. Watts (Eds.), Standard English: The widening debate, 117- 128. New York, NY: Routledge. Ukrainetz, Teresa A., Stacey Harpell, Chandra Walsh, and Catherine Coyle. 2000. “A preliminary investigation of dynamic assessment with Native American kindergartners.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 31, 142–154. Wiltse, Lynne. 2011. “’But my students all speak English’: Ethical research issues of Aboriginal English.” TESL Canada Journal 28 (SI5), 53-71. Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. 1989. Dialects and education: Issues and answers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.

Carleton Perspectives on Public Policy