Telling that to kids can only have good effects. First, it is telling them that they're not retarded —and neither are their parents. Second, it makes a clear separation between AAVE an standard English. They are two separate dialects, so, students should learn both. Third, if speaking standard English is "correcting errors", it may be percieved as a loss of Identity, "acting white" or whatever. If it is "speaking another language", this can't really be seen as such. For instance, I don't lose my French identity by writing English.

If the entire world sees AAVE as incorrectly spoken English without investigating furter, the entire world is simply mistaken. Kids should learn to correct the entire world's mistakes, not to do them.

I disagree. I think the mistake you are making is the focus around what is or is not "error". It's not about that. My friend from Argentina constantly strives to improve his American English, rather than his AAVE, regardless of your insistence of the validity of AAVE. He now works in an office on the 17th floor where he hires people, and I knew him when he knew no English. Like it or not it does makes a difference.

EDIT: I wanted to be sure I had my mom's views correct, so I asked her. To clarify, she says if a child is speaking ebonics she will explain there are different styles of speaking, and it depends on your audience. Speaking in that way is okay at home, for example, but in an academic setting the "correct" way is to go by the book.

I feel we don't understand each other. I'll try to restate what I said in more details.

What if the kid speaks French? Most likely, he will speak French at home, and American English at school. Sometimes, he will employ the wrong word or make a grammatical mistake while trying to exploit similarities between the two languages. Any professor hearing this will call this an error.

But but but, at home we say… say the poor boy. If the professor know French, he may answer What you say is more like French. In English, we say this…. Note this is not an encouragement to abandon French. Merely an encouragement to learn proper English.

Now, replace French by AAVE (or Ebonics). What has changed? I agree that the two languages are highly similar. This may be confusing to the kid. There is two ways to handle this:

(1) Saying to the kid that his last sentence wasn't proper English. This is very close to saying that he doesn't speak correctly, period. Knowing the way we speak at home, the kid can easily extend that statement to his parents or neighbours, and try to correct them, proud of the knowledge he just learned at school. I think this is dangerous, because this may be perceived a direct attack on their identity. This can lead the kid's family or friends to pressure him into not learning proper English, for instance by dismissing it as "speaking white" or something.

(2) Saying to the kid that his last sentence was AAVE, not English. Making a sharp distinction between the two. Insisting that at school, you are to speak English, not Ebonics. So, when the kid get home, he won't try and correct his parents. He may point out the differences between English and AAVE, but won't speak of them as errors. This is hardly an attack on the identity of Ebonics speakers. Plus, it makes sense: "black speak" in the "black world" (home), "white speak" in the "white world" (school and work). As a consequence, there is less reason for his family or friends to insist that he doesn't speak proper English.

Quite possibly, especially if he had the accent to match, considering the success of James Bond movies in America.

Rastafarian use of 'Me' for 'I' makes sense and is consistent.

Using 'bad' to mean 'good' probably isn't a good idea if you are an aircraft mechanic.

AAVE isn't correct or incorrect any more than gravity is correct or incorrect. They both exist; it's our job to study them.

Putting AAVE into a box labeled "incorrect English" is just a way to avoid the hard work of understanding our world.

And yes, the "academic" understanding of AAVE includes the sociolinguistic aspects denoting class, race, education, etc.

Simple, because of perception. Whether you like it or not perception matters. If I perceive your car as worth your selling price, a deal happens - doesn't mean my perception over yours is any more "correct". Same happens with stock prices, or hiring decisions. In other words, the things that matter in the day-to-day life in which we currently function include dictionaries and grammar books.

But it's the difference between recognizing AAVE as its own thing, sociolinguistic warts and all, and labeling it as "broken English."

Linguistics isn't just about grammar (in fact, in linguistics "grammatical" is basically synonymous with "understood by a native speaker"), it's also about the signals we send when we speak a certain way (semantics and sociolinguistics).

Labeling AAVE as "broken English" is just a way of dismissing it and giving ourselves an excuse for not understanding it.

For example, I know plenty of successful people who have poor grammar. But nobody goes around saying they speak "broken English," and if I pointed that out everyone would think I'm an asshole.

Why don't people react the same way when we say someone speaking AAVE has "broken English?" Why is it ok to point out how "poorly" they speak?

Anyhow, all I mean to say is that the proper study of AAVE includes the idea that speaking it signals certain things about the speaker, not just its syntax, morphology, etc.

I recommend reading the research of William Labov, who has ton of work in studying the various dialects of American English.

I agree that perception matters. For instance, a bad perception could mean you buy a worthless car, or make a bad hiring decision. It doesn't mean, however, that the car was worth your money, or that the bad employee was worth hiring.

Same thing about AAVE. If it has been proved that this is a dialect of English, it is a dialect of English. No matter how delusional the majority of the population can be.