This is a text to text annotation, connecting the text to itself, expanding it on how teachers can successfully teach what Gee calls “superficial features” of middle class discourse, and Susan taught and helped Marge learn a discourse relating to the middle class, educated, as well.
This I pointed out as another text to text annotation, and one that relates to Jordan, as she originally questioned whether she could teach her students of color literary discourse styles.
This is two annotations, the first of which is expanding on Delpits writing, as she mentioned that Gee’s notion that people have not been born into dominant discourses find it very difficult to acquire a discourse in the future, and to me it sounded like borderline discrimination. The second annotation, is another text to text connection and one that relates to Gee from Delpit, and I wrote that I agree with Delpit’s disagreement to Gee’s claim that discourses cannot be overtly taught, and I argued that many could be taught in a classroom today.
Delpit’s first objection to Gee is as follows, “He argues strongly that discourses cannot be “overtly” taught, particularly in a classroom, but can only be acquired by enculturation in the home or by “apprenticeship” into social practices.” (Delpit 546). This objection is very straightforward, and it is bringing up how Delpit disagrees with Gee’s claim that discourses cannot be overtly taught in a classroom. This is very clearly disproven, when discussing her friend Bill Trent, as she tells the story of how he and his classmates, despite going to a poor, black school in rural Illinois, were able to make something of their life, and become successful, powerful people, despite their upbringing. Delpit explains this by this quote, “First, their teachers successfully taught what Gee calls the “superficial features” of middle-class discourse–grammar, style, mechanics,–features that Gee claims are particularly resistant to classroom instruction. And the students successfully learned them.” (Delpit 549). This is obviously disproving Gee’s theory that discourses cannot be learned, as Trent and his classmates were taught them, learned them, and utilized them successfully to advance themselves in their careers. A text from Jordan that relates is , “Philip Garfield, would shortly “translate” a pivotal scene from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, as his finally term paper” (Jordan 370). This shows that Jordan was able to successfully teach her students the discourse of translating into Standard English, something Gee would disagree with heavily. However it does show that it is possible, and can be very effective.
The second objection Delpit has to Gee is as follows, “The second aspect of Gee’s work that I find troubling suggests that an individual who is born into one discourse with one set of values may experience only their values and not another set of values” (Delpit 547). This is especially wrong in Delpits eyes, as it is saying that those oppressed should stay oppressed, and that they are stuck where they are. Delpit disproves this, again by relating the story back to Trent, saying how, “These teachers also successfully taught the more subtle aspects of dominant discourse” (Delpit 549). Since these students were not born with these dominant discourses, they would have been oppressed in the eyes of Gee, and not allowed to oppress further. Jordan relates to this, when making the decision of which language to use in the letter to the police, as she students, “voted unanimously, to preface their individual messages with a paragraph composed in the language of Reggie Jordan” (Jordan 370). Despite not being born with a dominant discourse that, in the past, would have allowed them to write these powerful letters and challenge those around them, they develop them in the classroom and adopt a more dominant discourse.
