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In this ground-breaking study, Eleanor Wilson Orr argues that the performance of black students in math and science is crippled not by lack of intelligence of diligence but by linguistic interference. Using student work from an experimental program she helped establish the District of Columbia, Mrs. Orr traces specific ways nonstandard English usage can lead not merely to non-understanding but to actual misunderstanding-can lead, for example, to students subtracting or dividing backwards or to students inverting the use of twice and half.

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Library Journal Review

Orr believes that the structure of the nonstandard English spoken by many black students is a direct cause of their failure to do well in school, especially in mathematics and science. She examines and illustrates the function of standard English prepositions, conjunctions, and relative pronouns in the expression of quantitative relationships, arguing that speakers of black English have problems in understanding concepts. As co-founder of the innovative Hawthorne School in Washington, D.C., she was able to test her assumptions on student transfers from the public schools, 98 percent of whom were black. She developed teaching methods that appear to prove that the problems are correctable, even at the high school level. Likely to be controversial, certainly an important work. Shirley L. Hopkinson, Library & Information Science Div., California State Univ., San Jose (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

A veteran high school teacher of science and mathematics offers an unusual approach to the problem of underachievement among minority students. Founder with her husband of the Hawthorne School in the District of Columbia, Orr here describes the results of the school's experimental linguistic program from which her theory is developed: ``Differences between black English vernacular (BEV) and standard English can affect a BEV speaker's concept of certain quantitative relations.'' Observing the functional role of prepositions, conjunctions and relative pronouns in the identification of quantitative ideas, Orr pinpoints misunderstandings that beset students whose first language is nonstandard English. Her belief that BEV is rule-governed and not merely ``bad'' English is supported by data from her students who, for example, confuse ``twice'' and ``half'' or combine ``as'' and ``than'' in their partitive comparisons. The inquiry and explanations are complex, but Orr is generous with illustrations and invites compelling speculation on how the Hawthorne experiment might be replicated by educators seeking to unleash the scientific potential of disadvantaged black students. (August 19) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

In Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know (CH, Jul '87), E.D. Hirsch suggests that students have trouble understanding what they read because they are unfamiliar with the basic terms of their cultures. Eleanor Orr treats problems unique to native speakers of the Black English Vernacular (BEV) in understanding quantitative relationships necessary to grasp mathematics and science. She focuses on BEV's use of different parts of speech that establish semantic relationships-prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions-and demonstrates how fundamental differences in their use in Network Standard English (NSE) make it difficult for speakers of BEV to distinguish between addition and multiplication, between subtraction and division. Orr, who has an intelligent, pragmatic knowledge of BEV, contends that the focus in teaching black students has been on their deficiencies rather than on those crucial differences between their language, BEV, and NSE, which cause them to process information uniquely. Orr's book encourages reconsideration of the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. Based on nine years of research involving 320 students, Orr's study is a landmark in its field. Essential for college and university libraries, public libraries, and educational resource centers. Useful index and bibliography.-R.B. Shuman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign