By John Woestendiek Philadelphia Inquirer Wed., January 8, 1997
>NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who
>have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San
>Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or
>"Geekonics", as a second language.
>The historic vote on Geekonics -- a combination of the word "geek"
>and the word "phonics" -- came just weeks after the Oakland school
>board recognized black English, or Ebonics, as a distinct language.
>"This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy"
>Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics Unlimited, said after the school
>board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.
>"No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a
>celebration that saw many Geekonics backers come dangerously close
>to smiling. "Today, we are rebooting, implementing a program to
>process the data we need to interface with all units of humanity."
>Controversial and widely misunderstood, the Geekonics movement was
>spawned in California's Silicon Valley, where many children have
>grown up in households headed by computer technicians, programmers,
>engineers and scientists who have lost ability to speak plain
>English and have inadvertently passed on their high-tech vernacular
>to their children.
>HELPING THE TRANSITION
>While schools will not teach the language, increased teacher
>awareness of Geekonics, proponents say, will help children make the
>transition to standard English. Those students, in turn, could
>possibly help their parents learn to speak in a manner that would
>lead listeners to believe that they have actual blood coursing
>through their veins.
>"Bit by bit, byte by byte, with the proper system development, with
>nonpreemptive multitasking, I see no reason why we can't download
>the data we need to modulate our oral output," Macintosh said.
>The designation of Ebonics and Geekonics as languages reflects a
>growing awareness of our nation's lingual diversity, experts say.
>Other groups pushing for their own languages and/or vernaculars to
>be declared official viewed the Geekonics vote as a step in the
>right direction.
>"This is just, like, OK, you know, the most totally kewl thing,
>like, ever," said Jennifer Notat-Albright, chairwoman of the
>Committee for the Advancement of Valleyonics, headquartered in
>Southern California. "I mean, like, you know?" she added.
>THEY'RE HAPPY IN DIXIE
>"Yeee-hah," said Buford "Kudzu" Davis, president of the Dixionics
>Coalition. "Y'all gotta know I'm as happy as a tick on a sleeping
>bloodhound about this. We could be fartin' thru silk perty soon."
>Spokesmen for several subchapters of Dixionics -- including
>Alabonics, Tennesonics and Louisionics -- also said they approved of
>the decision.
>Bill Flack, public information officer for the Blue Ribbon Task
>Force on Bureaucratonics said that his organization would not
>comment on the San Jose vote until it convened a summit meeting,
>studied the impact, assessed the feasibility, finalized a report and
>drafted a comprehensive action plan, which, once it clears the
>appropriate subcommittees and is voted on, will be made public to
>those who submit the proper information-request forms.
>Proponents of Ebonics heartily endorsed the designation of Geekonics
>as an official language.
>"I ain't got no problem wif it," said Earl E. Byrd, president of the
>Ebonics Institute. "You ever try talkin' wif wunna dem computer
>dudes? Don't matter if it be a white computer dude or a black
>computer dude; it's like you be talkin' to a robot -- RAM, DOS,
>undelete, MegaHertZ. Ain't nobody understands. But dey keep talkin'
>anyway. 'Sup wif dat?"
>Those involved in the lingual diversity movement believe that only
>by enacting many different English languages, in addition to all the
>foreign ones practiced here, can we all end up happily speaking the
>same boring one, becoming a nation that is both unified in its
>diversity, and diversified in its unity.
>Others say that makes no sense at all. In any language.
---
Neal Koss.....International Informatics.....Torrance, CA
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Roseann Krane, http://www.mvhs.srvusd.k12.ca.us/~rkrane
Monte Vista High School, Network Manager (510) 552-2859
3131 Stone Valley Road, Danville, CA 94526,
Teacher, Computer Science Department (510) 837-7507
"All students are different, schools should make them more so!"
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