For the past several weeks, the nation -- and its news media -- have been engrossed in an on going and highly emotional debate on the subject of "Ebonics," a term used by some to define a linguistic system used by many -- but certainly by no means all -- African Americans.

In many ways, it is rather remarkable that any language issue could capture the attention of the general public or the news media for such a long period of time. Yet, the current Ebonics debate has done just that. Why?

Perhaps the controversy has received so much media attention because it emerged during the month of December, a traditionally slow news period. Or, perhaps, it is symptomatic of one of the nation's quintessential issues, which is how to handle race and linguistic diversity in a multicultural society.

The lightning rod for the controversy was a resolution passed by the Oakland, California Board of Education that advocated teaching African American children standard English competency by respecting the language systems they bring to school and using these systems as a bridge to teaching standard English. This reasonable goal of taking students from where they are to where they need to go has been depicted incorrectly by many as an initiative to teach Ebonics in the Oakland schools.

Some of the controversy was probably triggered by the language used within the resolution itself. To its credit, the Oakland School Board has since clarified its goals and intentions on the Internet (http://ousd.k12. ca.us/oakland.standard.html). In its clarification statement, the Board states that it is not advocating replacing teaching Standard American English with any other language, and that the Oakland Unified School District is not teaching Ebonics. It also has clarified that it does not view the language of African American children as being biologically based.

As we ponder the merits of Oakland's strategy to teach standard English, it is important to remember certain facts that are well documented within the sociolinguistic literature: