Recently, a California English teacher posted controversial videos on social networks claiming that teaching children how to write correctly is rooted in white supremacy. He also promised to start the school year with a new approach to teaching Linguistics, Fox News Digital reported.
Marta Shaffer, an English teacher at Oroville high school in northern California posted videos to Tiki, claiming that white supremacy culture runs deep in public schools.
Shaffer asked, “What does that mean?” Let’s take a look at how essays are written. Start with an introduction, which should include a thesis. Cite your sources. Use transition words such as ‘however’ or ‘therefore’. They’re arbitrary. They were made by Westerners at power.”
Shaffer claims that the IQ bell curve, SAT and SAT are both problematic and racist.
She said that almost all of the test writers were white, and they still are.
Shaffer’s recent social media bio included the following: “another cringey, millennial” and she was an ally for LGBT youth.
Shaffer stated, “As an educator I am constantly concerned if I am part the problem.” “Public education is an institution which upholds many problematic systems in our society, such as white supremacy, misogyny, colonization, and others. That B.S. I attempt to discredit ”
Shaffer said that writing rules and correct grammar are the “languages of power”. She stated that she would begin the school year by having a unit “honoring the way we talk” rather than “teaching students how to write properly.”
Shaffer stated that she studies linguistics and the rules we actually use when communicating, rather than the invented rules white supremacy created to help us write papers, which is what scholars refer to as the “language of power,” in another video that was posted to her TikTok profile, which has more than 13,000 followers.
Shaffer maintained that she tried to be inclusive of all ways that language is used. She also noted that her students use “AAVE,” or African-American Vernacular E, in academic essays.
Your boss, professors, and teachers may require you to speak and write in a way that is not natural to them. However, this does not negate the importance of your natural languages. Shaffer said they are as important, if no less important than the “language of respectability”.
