Obituary Dialogue

     Lovey's English teacher, Mr. Harvey, resorted to shaming his students into wanting to learn to speak standard English.  He constantly tells the students that they sound uneducated and says that they will go nowhere in life.  Mr. Harvey does this because his Hawaiian students speak pidgin English, which Mr. Harvey refers to as a "low-class form of good Standard English" and he is very frustrated that he cannot change the way they speak.   Mr. Harvey had a major impact on Lovey, he made her ashamed of who she was, what she ate, even her family.  Though Mr. Harvey may have intended to do good by constantly ridiculing and making the students feel little, the things that he said to them only forced them to accept that they will never make anything of themselves.
     I find the reasoning behind the way Mr. Harvey teaches very odd and interesting.  I think Mr. Harvey may have, at one point, attempted to treat the students how they deserved to be treated, like ordinary people.  After a few years of failing at his job, he began giving the students images that they won't be able to forget by treating them like garbage.  Mr. Harvey believes that if he informs the students of the worst image they may be seen as it will give them motivation to change their form of English.  What Mr. Harvey doesn't realize is pidgin English is the only form of English that the children know besides what they watch on television.  It seems that Mr. Harvey constantly ridicules the students, but doesn't take the time to actually teach the children how to speak proper English and inform them of the benefits of speaking proper English, vice the downfalls of speaking pidgin.