After watching the two videos assigned, I felt the Fox News and Ebonics video reflected a cultural deficit perspective and the video titled What Matter: Code Switching reflected a cultural difference perspective.
The Fox News video depicted the African American language as wrong or a "deficit". Gerald McClendon; author of the book Ax or Ask?, was brought to a school to teach students the proper or correct way to speak. Most students interviewed stated they were just not taught any different and no one corrected them along the way. This report seemed to treat these individuals as inferior due to the way they pronounced words which according to the article Concepts for Understanding: Educational Learning Theories states that cultural deficit theory justified the belief that certain groups were intelligently inferior to others, particularly to the group in charge.
What Matters: Code Switching on the other hand allowed for students to use their language and were encouraged to learn a "business" dialect to succeed in the coorporate world. This documentary explained that individuals' lauguages should be accommodated and teachers should try to meet students where they are recognizing that all have the same ability to learn. The cultural difference perspective is defined as just that- meaning- this theory focuses on people's lives and providing a way of seeing classroom and real world obstacles as misunderstandings.
As a finishing point, may I say, that as a whole our nation needs to be less ignorant to other cultures and human beings. We say we are a tolerant nation and people, yet we discriminate against those around us constantly, for the way others dress, social status, and the way we speak. As new educators coming up against a system that has many cracks, this obstacle is one of many... it is our duty to be aware of this tough issues and be as informed as possible and ready to stand in the gap for those young people who can not stand up for themselves.
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