Todays social epidemic is still the fallout from generations past. We are still being ‘Lynched” so to speak. Sociological’s today suggests to see what education should look like. From a structural-functional approach, “Schooling performs many vital tasks for the operation of society, including socializing the young and encouraging discovery and invention to improve our lives” (Macionis, 2009). The concept of school also helps us develop a diverse community by giving us a place to teach, learn, and share our norms and values with each other. Today we tend to justify the social disparity of the undereducated with terms like Standardized Testing and Tracking (assigning students to different types of educational programs). A perfect example …show more content…
This school has a curriculum that is focused on the education of vocation or trade. In this school they teach students how to become Auto-Mechanics, Cooks, Metal Fabricators, and Carpenters. Pittsfield High School, which is located on the opposite and more financially affluent side of town, is listed as a college preparatory high school, which specializes in getting their graduates prepared for higher education. “Social-Conflict analysis links formal education to social inequality to show how schooling transforms privilege into personal worthiness and disadvantage into personal deficiency.” (Macionis, 2009) Karl Marx’s social-conflict analysis would make a more direct correlation in the root of capitalism, with a focus on the social inequality of schooling based on creating a disadvantage between the rich and the poor. The unfortunate part of Marx’s theory is that it still holds true today. The fact that the underachievement rate of black males who go onto institutions of higher-education is extremely disproportionate to all other racial groups has prompted various studies …show more content…
One study reports: “Fewer than a third of black men who enter four-year colleges as freshmen graduate within six years, the lowest six-year graduation rate among all racial and ethnic groups, according to a recent analysis by Shaun R. Harper, an assistant professor of higher-education management at the University of Pennsylvania.” (Schmidt, 2008) Although this might have worked for me on a personal level, the truth remains that a lot of black males in this country do not have the support system, discipline, or confidence to know that they have the power to re-educate them self. Thus they find themselves in a society that has labeled them like a deviant for not being educated to the standards of the social norm. When in hindsight, it was probably the deviance of the educational system that has failed many students of color. It has been over seventy-five years since the release of the book The Mis-Education of the Negro, and the American Negro is still suffering from inequality in education. Its safe to say that we as a people are no longer legal slaves, but the golden-ring of higher education still evades the majority of the black community. We are now allowed to attend school but “48% of preschoolers suspended more than once are Black”(Flannery). Almost half of black children are “piped-lined” directly from preschool into the prison track aptly named, “The School to Prison Pipeline”(Flannery). Blacks are still seen as inferior, conditioned, and
These claims have been well documented. However, the connection to the graduation gap may be clearer with an answer of how other factors such as financial and other family problems brought about by poverty affect them. The rest of the book provides possible solutions to questions of invisibility such as respecting and valuing black students. Another solution is removing remedial programs for challenging curricula and supports that are appropriate.
In the article Black Males and Adult Education: A Call to Action written by Brendaly Drayton, Dionne Rosser-Mims, Joni Schwartz, and Talmadge C. Guy want to expose the challenges that black males face in education. They make it clear their purpose is to incite a great change in the way black males are treated in the education system, give black men a voice, and endorse an analytical evaluation of institutional procedures and practices. More importantly the article states that the authors’ point is not to encourage the stereotypes and behaviors attributed to black men that society has put upon them, rather their point is to show the world that their destructive view on black males is stopping them from reaching their full potential.
Unfortunately high dropout rates and poor academic performance have seemingly became synonymous with the experience of African American male youth. Upon visiting just about any public school in the Country you are bound to find African American male youth almost aimlessly wondering the halls, as if they have been alienated from the educational process and left to their own devices to discover the American dream for them. Their
Looking at these statistics it is easy to recognize the many hardships African American males have to endure and it also depicts the portrait of Black male underachievement at various points in their lives. “There is no shortage of empirical evidence to highlight the difficulties African American males encounter, including the realm of education and the consequences associated with being undereducated (McGee, 2013).
The African American males access to higher learning is detrimental to the United States economy. The social conditions that plague African American males in their quest for college degrees are very obvious. For more than 40 years, the African American male has been missing in action from higher learning institutions by a margin of 50:1. In this paper, I will explore the problems and the critical actions needed for correction.
Whites even made laws banning anyone to teach reading and writing to slaves (PBS). After the emancipation, Black Americans still struggled to fully educate themselves to an appropriate level equal to that of Whites education. The formation of historically black colleges and universities after the Civil War, such as Howard and Morehouse dwindled this struggle. With the decaying of legal segregation in the South and the nonlegal barriers in the North, an increased amount of blacks started to attend historically predominantly white universities. This has decreased from almost 100 percent to 21 percent of all African American undergraduates who attended HBCUs (Wenglinsky). Despite hope for equality in these desegregated educational institutions, the early promises in both opportunities and attainment in higher education for Blacks has withered away through erosions in enrollment and retention. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 42 percent. This figure is 20 percentage points below the 62 percent rate for white students. Two major components of this is the academic preparedness of black students and the learning environment.
In addition to not having much of an opportunity in various careers, African American men have sold a dream of sports since they were born. Theses images have deteriorated their drive to do well in academics.
There are several Black male initiatives on college campuses around the United States that focus on supporting the high school to college matriculation and retention of African American males. Furthermore, these initiatives are designed to support Black males as they navigate through their perspectives institutions (Palmer & Gasman, 2008). Support can come in many ways. For the purpose of this section, I will highlight some of the programs that focus on the success of African American males; Penn GSE Grad Prep Academy, Sam Houston State University, The Ohio State, and UCLA.
In America today there is a well-known “Achievement Gap” that effects the educational system today. The Achievement Gap is a theory that there is a learning gap in the way white students learn and retain information as opposed to the minority. In this minority group there falls one of the most prominent, black males. The question is why? Why has the graduation rate of black males decreased so much in 10 years? Why is this gap expanding over the years? Finally what are people doing to stop it? Are black males inferior to the other races and groups? The answer lies in the minds of black males, they are finding other ways around the educational system that may or may not be good.
African American males in higher education have captured the attention of researchers; sadly, exhausted amount of research has focused primarily on the failing black male, while little has been done to address the problem. This paper focuses on factors that influence the perceptions and self-esteem of African American males in higher education, and explore why their educational achievements are overwhelmingly lower than any other racial/ethnic group. Specifically, this review focuses on how research in education or the lack thereof has contributed to this particular issue. The review of literature in this paper leads to two research questions: (1) What efforts if any have been directed to address the negative outcomes of black males in higher education? (2) What other external factors have prevented black males from achieving their objectives at a lower rate than any other racial or ethnic group? The following 10 reviews attempt to answer the above questions.
The world has come a very long way since segregation was demolished with the help of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This has opened a lot of doors for African Americans in the United States. Better job opportunities and better chances at managing a stable family life. Sadly as time has passed and we have rolled into the 21st century things aren’t looking so great for the African males in school. This rate changes from time to time, yet we don’t know why or what it really is. So, what is the average graduation rate for African American males and why?
Although situational attribution prevails dispositional attribution within the Black male community, there are incongruous instances in which Black men have overcome the stigmas, relishing the social, economic, and political mobility they have achieved. However, even with social stability many prominent Black professionals still endure disenfranchisement. Looking strictly at the academia within a Black community, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that, “A majority of African-American males in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades do not reach grade-level proficiency in reading, mathematics, history, and science,” (NCES, 2007, 2009). The hurdles
According to Marian Wright Edelman, “Education is a precondition to survival in America Today. Unfortunately, a good quality education that will ensure a successful and economically stable future for our children today is not available to all children, especially young Black males. According to Jenkins (2006) in the needs assessment for African American Men of Arizona State University (AAMASU) program, the university noted that Black males experience a high level of underachievement in the higher education arena, over involvement in the criminal system, and high rates of unemployment, poverty, and dying via homicide (Arizona State University, 2004). All too often African American males have been caught in a web of stereotyped notions of race and gender that place them at considerable disadvantages in schools and ultimately society (Howard, 2008). According to Hooks (2004) more than any other group of men in our society black males are perceived as lacking intellectual skills. The 1900 census reports that 57% of black males were illiterate. Now as we move onward in the twenty-first century, black males make up a huge percentage of those who are illiterate (Hooks, 2004). Society will looks at our young black men and label them as lazy, uneducated, underachievers, and highly involved in the criminal justice system, however at the same time, it overlooks how they got there. According to Jenkins (2006) this has not always been the case. Prior to the segregation of schools, young
After reviewing the literature, the following sections will be discussed in this literature review: (a) the status of African American males in higher
Education is an important structure in society that shapes the most important years of your life, and therefore many theorists have ideas about what is wrong with education, what is right, and what needs to change or develop. Education is confined a lot by social control and social reproduction. Social control is a concept that refers to how social systems control the way we feel, think, behave, and even how we should present ourselves. These can appear openly, shown as rules and laws, or they could be not openly acknowledged and just appear as the “common” thing to do. Social reproduction is the reproduction of inequalities throughout generation-to-generation, one way education does this is how it supplies “wealthy” schools more and “poor” schools less. Michael Apple and Maxine Greene both define Social reproductions and Social Control. Throughout this text, I will explain the theories of Greene and Apple, as well as comparing and contrasting them against one another while applying some of my own experiences of education.