Posted on 09/23/2016 7:02:36 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
A campaign initiated by the National Association for Bilingual Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education says a teacher who mispronounces a student’s name is causing a negative emotional state that can lead to poor academic success.
The campaign, titled “My Name, My Identity: A Declaration of Self,” says “Did you know that mispronouncing a student’s name negates the identity of the student? This can lead to anxiety and resentment which can hinder academic progress.”
Rita Kohli, an assistant professor of education at the University of California at Riverside, told NEA Today – the publication of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union – that overlooking the mispronunciation of a student’s name is a “microaggression” that can sabotage the learning process.
“Names have incredible significance to families, with so much thought, meaning and culture woven into them,” Kohli says. “When the child enters school and teachers – consciously or not – mispronounce, disregard or change the name, they are in a sense disregarding the family and culture of the students as well.”
Kohli and Daniel Solorzano conducted a study in 2012 called “Teachers, Please Learn Our Names!: Racial Microagressions and the K-12 Classrooms.” They found that mispronouncing students’ names affected their social and emotional state.
“Students often felt shame, embarrassment and that their name was a burden,” Kohli says. “They often began to shy away from their language, culture and families.”
She adds that teachers who mispronounce a student’s name tend to do so because they find it challenging “to center cultures outside of their own.”
Fortunately for most, Kohli cuts some slack for teachers who mispronounce a student’s name on the first attempt.
Meanwhile, education blogger Jennifer Gonzalez refers to the mispronunciation of a student’s name as “a tiny act of bigotry.” She continues:
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
NO! It is, straight out, a complete AGGRESSION against non-liberal values, at least as taught by government schools!
If they come here then they should join our culture, which means adopting English. Coming here to maintain their language and culture is not immigration but invasion.
Somehow Italian, Romanian, Spanish and other immigrants with easily mispronounced names handled this with no problem. They even had their names CHANGED at Ellis Island, and dealt with it.
In my teaching career, I always tried to ask the kid to say his or her name, but some were so out there that it was hard to say it correctly. And to take the obvious race bit out of it, the hardest name to get right was ‘Alexia’. The girl was from a Greek family and insisted that it was pronounced ‘Alex ee a’ with the emphasis over the i. For two of three years I called her ‘Alex’. She must have been ok with me because she brought me back bits of marble from the Parthenon and the Temple of Apollo.
Okay, let’s give every student a number at the beginning of the year and refer to them by number only. Wait, number order could be injurious to their psyches. Let’s go with “hey you.” There is bound to be something wrong with that, too. How about we just abolish the public indoctrination system all together.
In the novel “Unintended Consequences” there is a government agent who is usually referred to by her initials — GG.
Turns out her first name (which she prefers not to use) was given to her when she was born — although her mother couldn’t think of a name, a helpful intern at the hospital had a suggestion. The name she was given rhymes with “Gloria” but it’s spelled in a unique way — Gonorrhea.
Costley ... as in "expensive, with an "e"."
Not a chance ... it's been everything from "Costely" to "Costello" to "Costelery" to "Castleray" and probably some that I can't even remember.
I couldn't care less how they pronounce my name, as long as I know who they're directing the question to and that they remember who gets the credit when I do something right. IF I do something wrong, I'm hoping that they can't find me because my name doesn't match what their memory holds.
Who wants to go on the air and respond to Rita Cooley?
I will admire a politician who actively endorses abolishing “political correctness”.
There are FIVE letters in my last name. It has been misspelled and mispronounced since first grade. It didn’t stop me from getting a Chemical Engineering degree and two Masters.
Wish I had known about all this micro aggression back then. I might have gotten even better grades.
I had a Greek classmate whose name was Aspacia Apostolakis.
Why don’t they just move to North Korea if they love totalitarianism so much?
I have a Welsh first name that is easy to pronounce if you take a moment or two to really look at it. But most people just glance at it and then butcher it. That was absolutely humiliating as a kid in school, especially when there was a sub (guaranteed to be even less literate than the teacher). College was a much better experience in that way because most professors could read.
I definitely get the anxiety and feeling of burden attached to having a frequently mispronounced name (thank you SO much, Mom and Dad), but freaking deal with it and move on! Most of us manage to do that. Sheesh.
What if the professor is from a country where the native language doesn’t contain the sounds needed?
Japanese famously have trouble with “l”. Americans learning Spanish have a tough time trilling the “rr” double r sound. Many non-Jews find the “ch” sound difficult. And so on. These are microaggressions?
I have a 5 letter last name that seems impossible for people to pronounce or spell properly. I was never offended.
In ever so many ways, modern Leftist "thinking," is a return to the idiocy that Dean Swift describes in Gulliver's voyage to Laputa. It is very, very difficult to even satirize their obsessions.
“way too silly”
A teacher should know the difference.
Until second grade, my last name was Dinki. Then we changed it to Rogers, which was my grandmother’s last name on my father’s side. I was Dinki until graduation, but I did just fine. National Honor Society.
Afrodeseac is a great name for a black porn star from the 70s.
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