from the former Dean of Education at UC Berkeley (Bernard R. Gifford):
     
>I believe there are two important issues this episode has raised. 
>
>First, academics must be much more aware of the messages they convey to the 
>general public through the press, especially in situations where it is 
>possible to inflict serious damage on a desperate community already beset 
>by serious problems.  In this dispute over the merits of "Ebonics," I 
>believe that many members of the press had their story in hand and were 
>simply looking for faculty mouthpieces to give legitimacy to their 
>predetermined views....
>
>Second, the Oakland Board of Education passed a poorly worded resolution, 
>and for this maybe they need to be taken to the woodshed, especially by 
>their friends and supporters.  But the errors of the Board should not blind 
>any of us to the true message and meaning of the Ebonics resolution, that 
>being that children of African descent are in deep, deep trouble in a 
>variety of educational areas, including the area of language instruction, 
>learning and assessment.  Moreover, the folly of the Board should not blind 
>us to that fact that some of these troubles may be compounded by the way 
>the larger society treats individuals who are speakers of non-prestige 
>varieties of English, no matter how correct their grammar.
>
>I believe that the larger truth to be conveyed to the general public is 
>that something is desperately wrong with the public educational system if 
>teachers of non-English speaking students can obtain higher pay, teach 
>smaller classes and secure the assistance of a paraprofessional assistant, 
>proficient in the non-English speaking student's first language, while poor 
>children of African descent are abandoned to classrooms that have too many 
>students, where they are likely to be taught by poorly paid, overburdened 
>and underprepared teachers, who in most instances cannot draw upon 
>paraprofessional assistance of any sort.
>
>Resolving this disparity does not mean that we should cut back on the 
>assistance we provide non-English speaking children.  That would be dumb, 
>unfair and run counter to the long-term interests of all of our children, 
>as well as the long-term well-being of our nation.  On the other hand, why 
>not fight alongside the Oakland School Board to expand the same privileges 
>now enjoyed by non-English speaking students to poor children of African 
>descent? Why not speak truth to power, regarding the desperate conditions 
>in the Oakland schools that lead the Board to take such a desperate 
>measure? Why not use the privileged positions we occupy in the University 
>to speak out about what we know all too well, that for poor children of 
>African descent, the public schools as they are currently constituted are 
>not working.
>
>The tragedy in this situation is that the Oakland School Board did 
>something dumb, while attempting to improve the educational opportunities 
>of their most needy students, and, unfortunately, in the hullabaloo over 
>the poorly worded resolution of the Board, and in the learned critiques of 
>academics, expounding from the safety and security afforded by tenure, the 
>import of this tragedy has been lost.
>