The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom

From the MacArthur Award- winning author of Other People's Children, a collection that gets to the heart of the relationship between language and power in the classroom. A powerful and sophisticated reminder that words can indeed do as much damage as sticks and stones, The Skin That We Speak takes the discussion of language in the classroom beyond the highly charged war of idiomsin which "English only" really means standard English onlyand presents today's teachers with a thoughtful exploration of the varieties of English we speak and the layers of politics, power, and identity those varieties carry. Edited by MacArthur Fellow and bestselling education author Lisa Delpit and education professor Joanne Dowdy, the book includes an extended new piece by Delpit herself, as well as groundbreaking new work by Herbert Kohl and Gloria Ladson-Billings, and classics by Asa Hilliard and Jules Henry. Award-winning educator Victoria Purcell-Gates looks at language-based assumptions about poor Appalachians and Schuaib Meacham follows the very different fates of two bright young African American teachers-in-training, one of whom speaks "standard" English and one of whom speaks in school as she has been taught to speak at home. As children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate, The Skin That We Speak offers a cutting-edge look at crucial educational issues.