Voice of the self - Essay Example

Voice of the self One of the compelling explanations of the issues of the language education for African Americans, Keith Gilyard’s Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence (1991) is an autobiographical narrative dealing with the author’s life as a student in the American Public School System. The author maintains that young African-Americans have not achieved Standard Language competence in public schools over the past quarter century and it has becomes a one of the main issues of today’s education in the country.

The various chapters in the book deal with the narrative stories from Gilyard’s experiences in different social situations and the scholastic analyses of these experiences. Therefore, Gilyard’s personal and professional perspectives of today’s education, especially with regard to Standard English language skills, have great implication for education, in general, and language education for African Americans, in particular. In the sixth chapter of the book, Big Fame and Other Games”, the author introduces various types of language games and poetry writing exercises of his school days.

“The moments were unfolding that would become the central core of my sports memory, visions I can recall more readily and with more exactness than many events of far more recent times.” (Gilyard, 76) All through this chapter, the author provides convincing narration of his experiences in the school and brings out the issues of the African Americans. A reflective analysis of the chapter 6, 7, 8 and 9 of Voice of the Self confirms that the book is a unique blend of memoir and scholarship of the author bringing about the major elements of his education and the issues of language education for African Americans.

The seventh chapter of the book, “The Self, Advancing Literacy, and Sidewalk University”, deals with how the author progresses his personal development, advances in literacy set, reading, interest in sports, relationship between home life and school progress, etc. The influence of the various elements of learning in the school on the development of the author’s personality is brought to light in this chapter. The influence of the teachers such as Marva Collins is also revealed in this section.

However, the most essential contribution to his self-development was made by himself, i.e. he remained his own guardian of the self. “What I am most positive of is that because of the ability I possessed in reading, writing, and speaking, much of which developed despite the constricting nature of some aspects of schooling, I departed from elementary school as a confident user of a language accepted in the mainstream. By remaining my own best guardian of the self, I realized a great deal of the communicative potential I had brought to school.

” (Gilyard, 76) The author also maintains that the relationship between his school progress and his home life is essential, because for him it was not a broken family, but merely a bent family. In the eighth chapter of the book, “Valedictory”, the author deals with the culmination of his school experience and the learning of the Standard English. It is important to recognize that the author narrates every aspect of his experiences in the school in connection with the overall experiences of the African-Americans in the country.

The ninth chapter of the book, “Conclusion”, serves as an apt wrapping up of the entire discussion made in the book. Significantly, the author joins together his self-analysis of his own experiences and the universal issues of language pedagogy, bringing out the differences between Black English and Standard English. In conclusion, Keith Gilyard’s Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence, winner of an American Book Award, makes a compelling exploration of the central issues of language education for African-Americans, based on his personal experiences.

Work Cited Gilyard, Keith. Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence. Wayne State University Press. 1991.