The contaminated slate Pt I
December 14, 2003
by Dr Winford James
In teaching, as in every other activity of living, belief and attitude are far more important than facts and content knowledge. Indeed, they are the ultimate paradoxes in that they are partially creatures of the process of observation while also being entities that prejudice that process. They are also creatures of the process and activity of imposition that takes the form of, for example, indoctrination, revelation, tradition, and fear. They are responsible for good developments and states of affairs as well as bad ones. Certain beliefs and attitudes may masquerade as worthwhile and proper possessions even while they cause great damage and grief. They abound in the practice of teaching.
One of them is the belief, in parents and teachers alike, that children from 'underprivileged', 'deprived' backgrounds come to the classroom without the right (kinds and levels of) knowledge, experience, and intelligence. There is little literacy and scholarship in their homes, so the belief goes; their interests are substantially different from those held up by the school authorities and readily embraced by students of more accommodating backgrounds; their language is broken and non-standard; their intelligence is low. Let's call the belief the theory of the Contaminated Slate.
According to the theory, which is not usually expressed in the terms I have given it, the background - by which you must understand the collection of ways of cooking, eating, dressing, playing, liming, worshipping, speaking, perceiving - which their social context has inscribed on their mind and their personality is badly flawed, corrupt, improper, unwholesome. It therefore needs to be cleaned, sanitised, erased, replaced. And that's the job of school and approved society.
The theory is pervasive, but it is perhaps most active in beliefs about language. Parents and teachers will tell their charges that they are speaking bad, broken English when they (the charges) produce normal speech in Creole. They will tell them, even while some of them (teachers and parents) have the same behaviour, that pronouncing 'th' as 'd' or 't', leaving out the 't' in words like 'last' and 'best', and chopping off the 'g' in words like 'eating' and 'Manning' are bad practices. They will tell them that omitting 'are' from 'we coming' and exchanging 'will' or 'would' for 'go' in, e.g., 'we will call you' are corrupt, broken ways to speak. They will tell them that words / phrases like 'allyou', 'bati mamzelle', and 'bamsi' / 'bumsi' may be good for the village or local community but not for 'out there', where they must use 'you', 'dragon fly', and 'bottom' / 'buttocks' / 'butt' / 'rump'. As school is a part of Out There, they will tell them that it is definitely wrong to use such language there.
Far more perniciously (though they are happily unaware of their linguistic wrongdoing), teachers of English treat children from the 'contaminated' backgrounds not only as if their language is structurally contaminated, but also as if they have no grammar or literary style at all. So they will teach them, even up to Form 3, nouns, verbs, and adjectives as if the students do not use these categories of words in their routine speech. And they will teach figurative devices such as metaphor and simile as if the students have no experience whatsoever of these styles of self-expression. Now the students may not know the labels 'noun', 'verb', etc - they certainly do not start off knowing them! - but that does not mean either that they do not use them or that they do not know how to use them.
Simple observation must certainly show that children efficiently pick up the speech of their home and community, that different social contexts produce different versions of language in general and of English in particular, that contractions and reductions are not limited to Creole but occur in English as well (e.g., 'I have' to 'I've'; 'we will' to 'we'll; 'madam' to 'ma'am'), that different words are used to refer to the same things in different social contexts and geographical regions, and that people from the lower strata of society perfectly understand one another's speech. But indoctrination and tradition ('the speech of the British colonial master is better than the mislearnt, imperfectly acquired speech of the slaves and their progeny'; 'Standard English is the proper way to speak, while Creole is bad, broken language') have seen to it that these facts are misread or distorted.
The ultimate culprit is the theory of the Contaminated Slate. Subscription to it, widespread in the Caribbean, has created a bogus value system in which the routine, inescapable human behaviours of particular social groups are judged to be social diseases to be excised, eradicated, and replaced by behaviours practised and cherished by other social groups. It has led to a great deal of social intolerance. It makes the majority of our populations indulge, often unwittingly, in self-contempt, self-reduction, and self-erasure. And, critically, it has blinded teachers to the easily observable fact that all normal children are naturally bright, are natural geniuses at acquiring and reconstructing social experience.
When teachers see five-, ten-, and thirteen-year olds as bringing nothing to the classroom or as bringing worthless knowledge, ideas, and experiences - possessions and capabilities that make them competent in their home and community settings - they are reflecting their belief in the Contaminated Slate. When they see little children, who are fluent and articulate in their Creole, as inarticulate, inexpressive, and intellectually slow because they have not yet taken command of a language that the very teachers who are supposed to teach them have not taught them, we are seeing the doctrine of the Contaminated Slate in action. And when they ignore or neglect children from 'contaminated' backgrounds who are not adapting as fast as those from more accommodating backgrounds, we are witnessing the full fury of the theory.
The Contaminated Slate is clearly a pernicious, calamitous theory. It's time all teachers convert to the theory of the Legitimate Slate!
Part I | Part II
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