Responding to Gee and Delpit

In reading Gee’s and Delpit’s essays, there is a certain chain of utterance that is required to understand Delpit from Gee and to understand how both relate and relate to you. To read the Delpit essay, Delpit assumes that her readers have read or at least familiar with the key concepts of Gee’s essay. Gee has to say that one is bound to their primary discourse and have a lot of trouble entering into another discourse and that one learns and becomes who they are through unconscious learning in one’s discourse. They become one way naturally, without awareness. Delpit argues these points by saying that one can be taught to enter into another discourse and can even learn to manipulate or transform a secondary discourse for their own personal empowerment or gain. She also claims that the learning that goes on inside a discourse is something that we are aware of. Where Gee says it is difficult for a student in a separate language discourse to enter into an academic discourse, Delpit argues that it is crucial for teachers to teach their students correct grammar and other superficial things that are crucial for entering into a primary academic discourse. It is important for us as English teacher’s to understand this and that it is our goal to teach proper language skills within our discourse, regardless of whatever outside discourses students come from. How can you make students from all sorts of other discourses learn to conform and transform into the academic discourse that you need to teach, and to what point can one punish the students for retaining what they have been taught all their lives through their dominant discourse however?