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Author(s): Jeff Zorn [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0001 2299 4243, grid.263156.5, Santa Clara University, , 95053, Santa Clara, CA, USA [Displayed Quote]Two things flow from this racism-is-all myth: (1) [...]

Author(s): Jeff Zorn [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Santa Clara University, 0000 0001 2299 4243, grid.263156.5, , 95053, Santa Clara, CA, USA 'We were right about the war. We were right [...]

Author(s): Jeff Zorn [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) 0000 0001 2299 4243grid.263156.5Santa Clara University, 95053, Santa Clara, CA, USA The key connection between A.J. Angulo's two recent books, Diploma Mills : [...]

Author(s): Jeff Zorn[sup.1] Author Affiliations: Jeff Zorn is emeritus senior lecturer of English at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053; jzorn@scu.edu. (1) Santa Clara University, 95053, Santa Clara, CAUSA [...]

Author(s): Jeff Zorn[sup.1] Author Affiliations: Jeff Zorn is senior lecturer of English at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053; jzorn@scu.edu. (1) Santa Clara University, 95053, Santa Clara, CAUSA Jonathan [...]

This article presents the author's critique of "Students' Right to Their Own Language" (SRTOL), a resolution affirming the legitimacy of dialect from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). "Students' Right to Their Own Language" remains the official position statement of the guild of college compositionists on dialect difference, lionized to this day as a first principle of "liberatory" English teaching. The sound, kind impulse behind SRTOL was to support the aspirations of poor, nonwhite, and culturally marginalized students. The document itself, however, offered underachievement and provincialism to the students it purported to serve. Even its advocates concede that SRTOL reads as committee prose with the different hands not smoothly blended, but no one has said firmly enough, or demonstrated patiently enough, how little sense SRTOL makes. The author's critique develops six points, all with wide-ranging importance for English education, and more generally for U.S. education, today. STROL (1) never begins to examine a "right" to one's own language; (2) offers no consistent view on the importance of dialect; (3) wildly overrates its "sophisticated" knowledge in sociology and linguistics; (4) both draws on and feeds into a reactionary politics of ethnic-cultural chauvinism; (5) clumps people into homogeneous, internally undifferentiated groups, missing individuals (in particular, individual student-writers) entirely; and (6) tries to shame English teachers for professional work of which one should be proud. Here, the author shows that SRTOL is a shameful piece of work whose ongoing endorsement warps and stains language education in the United States.

Tries to clarify the ethics and pragmatics of test-based diploma denial by setting out and evaluating the two camps' positions. Notes the author's aims are taxonomic, hoping to organize a confusing array of arguments; and partisan, hoping to guide further action on these very significant debates, especially as they involve the practice of English teaching at the classroom level. (SG)

Argues the artificial, propagandistic quality of demonizing the enemy, a technique used by both sides in the Persian Gulf War. Asserts that principled and effective foreign policymaking requires intelligence and moral courage, whereas demonizing the enemy requires only a phrase book and the will to injure. (PRA)

The former secretary of education in the US, William Bennett, was an enthusiastic supporter of the writings of Dr Martin Luther King. He suggested they should form part of required reading for all Americans. Some observers take issue with this support of Dr King's philosophies, arguing that the pieces chosen downplay King's struggles against racism, and that the speeches chosen are too conservative. It is suggested that far from satisfying Dr King's search for the truth, his philsophical studies left King with many questions unanswered.

Grades the Educational Testing Service in taking over the National Assessment of Educational Progress literacy project with a "C-", claiming Part One earned a "D" for abandoning some of the most cogent and winning strategies of previous NAEP studies and Part Two earned a "C" for providing confusing unexplained data. (NH