The Misteaching of Academic Discourses: The Politics of Language in the Classroom

In her book, The Misteaching of Academic Discourses, Lilia I. Bartolomé thoughtfully discusses the significance of teaching working-class linguistic minority students academic discourse styles necessary for success in school and she powerfully describes one teacher's attempts to do so. The author presents her classroom study as a case in point and captures the ideological battle of wills that results when one teacher attempts to elicit from students more standard and academic ways of speaking. Unlike more conventional language learning literature where the political dimensions of language learning are seldom acknowledged or addressed, Bartolomé candidly discusses the dominant “deficit” ideology underlying cultural difference explanations of linguistic minority student underachievement as well as the “romantization” ideology that implicitly presents dominant culture ways of speaking as more advanced and desirable ways of communicating. Her book critically analyzes a well-intentioned teacher's efforts to teach her working class Mexican American students mainstream academic ways of speaking and unmasks the veiled antagonistic relationship between a white teacher and her students of color, the students' resistance efforts, and the teacher's resulting deficit explanations of her students' performance. The Misteaching of Academic Discourses is a must read for all those educators who are faced with issues of language, race, and class.