Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom, New Edition by Lisa Delpit, Joanne Kilgour Dowdy (Editor)

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Synopsis

From the celebrated author of Other People's Children, a fifth anniversary edition of the pathbreaking collection examining the relationship between language and power in the classroom, with a new introduction.

At a time when children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when the class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate, The Skin That We Speak offers a cutting-edge look at crucial educational issues. Now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Delpit revisiting the politics of language instruction for students of color, The Skin That We Speak takes the discussion of language in the classroom beyond the highly charged war of idioms—in which "English only" really means standard English only—and presents today's teachers and parents with a thoughtful exploration of the varieties of English we speak and the layers of politics, power, and identity that those forms carry.

With groundbreaking work from Herbert Kohl, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Lisa Delpit herself, the book also includes classics by Geneva Smitherman and Asa Hilliard III. Hot-button topics range from Ebonics to the creation of a national public policy on making English the official language of our classrooms.

Biography

MacArthur Fellow Lisa Delpit is the executive director for the Center for Urban Education and Innovation at Florida International University. She is the author of the bestselling Other People's Children (The New Press) and the recipient of the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a "visionary scholar and woman of courage." She lives in Miami. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy is an associate professor of adolescent/adult literacy at Kent State University in the department of teaching, leadership, and curriculum studies in Kent, Ohio, where she lives.