Responding to Gee and Delpit

Gee and Delpit in their article on Discourse, present to different sides to the argument of whether a student can easily enter a discourse that is not their primary one when they are simply learning in a classroom setting. Gee’s argument is about how students are or are not able to learn secondary discourses and dominant/ non-dominant literatures. This is important in education because it is important to understand that a student’s Primary Discourse may differ from that used in the classroom. It is important to provide tactics for acquisition and apprenticeship in the classroom to help assimilate children into that particular discourse. However, Gee argues that a student’s identity kit so to speak may keep him or her from being able to participate in subsequent secondary discourses.

However, in slight opposition to this idea is Delpit’s argument. She is arguing that students can indeed acquire discourses that are not the dominant ones they grew up with. She uses these terms to describe how they can accomplish that whether by transformation or “cheating” she also expresses the problems on the part of the teachers and students that may prevent them from doing so in both not-teaching and not-learning. Her biggest problem with Gee is on the subject of whether a student can master a secondary discourse that they have not been exposed to simply by learning it in the classroom versus their primary discourse which they have years to acquire and be fully surrounded by in a comfortable setting. This debate is relevant to teachers because there comes a point when you have to set expectations for students about what they can accomplish and what you as a teacher are going to teach and require from them.
I strongly agree with Delpit’s argument, that students should be taught the dominant discourse ceaselessly by teachers from any approach that will allow them to see the importance of learning what is dominant. I think that in order for students to succeed they must have a grasp of the language required to succeed whether they agree with it or not. It is our job as teacher to prepare them to succeed, not let them down by being too cautious.

With the widening gap of backgrounds that come into an English classroom, these debates grow more and more significant on whether it is okay to challenge the discourse that a child grew up with and force them to learn another way that may go against their beliefs, and at the very least their way of life. It raises questions of whose right is it to say what they dominate discourse is? Who has the authority to threaten a student’s background by imposing new and daunting ideas and language? Will a teacher get in trouble for expressing their ideas about applying dominant discourse lessons to all students, and finally to go back to Gee’s argument, can students from more diverse backgrounds even be expected to learn a different discourse from their primary one? All of these areas seem important to have more information on as well as knowing specific techniques of how to counter student and parent resistance if I am a teacher who insists on teaching all students the dominant discourse of education.