Self-Published Manuscript: The Story of The Nationhood School

Urban Education
The Story of the Nationhood School: Mediating the Effects of Conditional Genocide Amongst Its Students
Manuscript ID: Manuscript Type: Keywords:
r Fo
Journal: Abstract:
Urban Education UE-11-05-079 Article Achievement Gap < Social, Violence < Social, Incarceration < Social, Ethnography < Subjects, No Child Left Behind < Programs The researcher immerses himself in the Nationhood school in order to examine pre-conceived categories. During the course of the research the complexities of the community posed challenges to the pre-conceived categories. The researcher ended up writing a narrative that tells the story of Nationhood School's struggle to mediate these complexities.
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ue
Pe
er
Re
vi ew
Page 1 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
INTRODUCTION Since the founding of the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) in 1972, a group that helped to spawn many independent African Centered Schools, their communities had undergone a dramatic shift in their socioeconomic landscapes. At approximately the same time as the founding of CIBI, Willhelm (1970) posited that Black labor has moved from exploitation to uselessness. He coined the term conditional genocide (1986) because uselessness has put Blacks in the vulnerable position of being expendable. While history has shown us that the Native Americans who were considered useless to the growing agricultural economy were expended at the hands of the white mans guns, alcohol, theft of lands and diseased blankets; the conditional genocide of Blacks may appear more self-inflicted through drugs, gun violence, gangs and incarceration. Many African Centered practitioners had been acutely aware of these changes and its effects on the Black community (Madhadbuti, 1990, Perkins, 1991, Wilson, 1990). Despite this awareness, formidable challenges presented obstacles to effectively implementing African centered education. In light of these challenges, this paper told the story of one African Centered Schools struggle to mediate the effects of
the landscape on its students.
Research Question This paper investigated the environmental context of the school through the research question: How does an African Centered School mediate the effects of the environmental context on its students? Particular attention was paid to the tension between the schools African Centered pedagogy, the youth culture and the local community challenges.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 2 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
The Multiplication of Uselessness: Black Students in Public Schools The system of education has played a primary role in the production of uselessness within the African American community. According to the Schott Foundations Public Education and Black Male Students: The 2006 State Report Card (Holzman, 2006) only 38% of Black males in the state of New York during the 2003 through 2004 school year graduated with their cohort in four years. In New York City the 26% rate of graduation for Black males for the 2003 and 2004 school year was much lower than the rest of the New York State. With a disproportionate number of African American students in some cities not finishing high school these students futures in the workplace were precarious at best. These hurdles were further exacerbated by the growing overrepresentation of Blacks in the US criminal justice system. Talbert-Johnson (2000) suggested that minority students educational failure is costly to society because the failure correlates with the growing prison industrial complex. There were nearly a third more African American men who are incarcerated than enrolled in higher education (Schiraldi, Holman & Beatty, 2000).
Significance of the Study The problems facing African Americans, especially males, had reached great enough proportions to garner major media and scholarly attention. African American boys had been over identified for special education services in school. Harry (2006) found that Blacks boys are disproportionately classified as behavior problems and placed in special education without regard to the damage this placement has on these boys
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 3 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
futures, which may include dropping out of school. Boyd (2006) found that six out of ten black men who had dropped out of school have spent time in prison. Porter (1997) indicted the system of education for placing Black males in special education as a means of preparing them for incarceration. During the 1990s cities like Detroit and Milwaukee implemented educational reforms to address the crises amongst African American students, particularly males. Responding to the plight of African American males who have been considered endangered as evidenced by the increasing representation of Black males in prison, the increasing rate of Black and Black homicide, the staggering unemployment and high drop-out rate, these reforms sought to build schools as change agents (Giralbaldi, 1992, Milwaukee African American Male Task Force, 1990 and Leake & Leake, 1992). Many of the reforms had included the creation of African Centered Schools or African American Immersion Schools in the public school system. These schools aimed to eliminate the negative attitudes and influences that impeded the academic success of African American students, especially males (Pollard & Ajirotutu, 2000). By implementing an African Centered educational model in the public school arena, these schools hoped to replicate the experiences of independent schools like the Nationhood School. The changes in the political landscape during the Bush years led politicians to favor quick fix de-contextualized explanations of teaching and learning. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) exemplified this type of policy. By suggesting that a few noteworthy changes like raising test scores, getting teachers to work harder and making employees more accountable can eliminate the achievement gap; the reform dismissed
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 4 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
the notion of structural inequality. Little reference was made towards eliminating the structural inequality that has been embedded in the environmental context as a means of closing the achievement gap. Research (Ainsworth, 2002, Noguera, 2001, Bettis, 1994 and Delaney-Black, 2002) had shown that the environmental context of the community has a profound impact on student achievement. However, politicians still favored quick fix within school changes, while ignoring change in the larger community. In an effort to close the achievement gap of the city surrounding the school under study, seven charter schools had been opened since the start of the research. Despite the efforts on the school front, the city was ranked as the fourth most violent city in the country for its size in 2005 (Morgan Quitno Awards: 12th Annual Americas Safest and Most Dangerous Cities), setting a record with 31 murders of which 22 were considered gang-related (Signal, January 25, 2006). In 2003 there was only 1 gang related murder (Nygard, January 7, 2008). Since the start of the research gang violence had escalated
and became a significant issue in the city.
This section of the paper was concerned with research related to social and economic trends that contribute to the character of the neighborhoods, and thus the environment within a school. Eamon (2005) posited these neighborhood elements had negatively impacted young peoples educational experience. This section examined the literature on deindustrialization, urban renewal, the growth of the crack market and its offspring gun violence and incarceration. Willhelms theory of conditional genocide (1986) was posited almost a generation ago during the early years of the explosion of
r Fo
THE LANDSCAPE OF CONDITIONAL GENOCIDE
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 5 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
crack cocaine in the US. An overview of current conditions within the Black community gave more credence to his theory than when it was first developed.
Deindustrialization Bluestone and Harrison (1982) referred to the widespread systematic disinvestment in the nations basic productive capacity as deindustrialization. Provoked by an increase in international competition in the 1960s, American businesses shifted capital, thereby eroding the industrial base of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Corporate managers, in an effort to increase their bottom line, closed plants and relocated to non-union areas of the country. The fast-paced movement of capital during the 60s and 70s disregarded people and communities in the race for wealth. The authors contended that the flight of capital has left behind shuttered factories and displaced workers.
Bluestone and Harrison (1982) went on to further explain the effects of these processes on cities that experienced industrial collapse have been numerous and for the most part negative. Manufacturing jobs have been replaced by service sector jobs designed for workers with minimal education. The significantly lower salaries for these less skilled jobs meant that many of the employed failed to make a living wage. For example, someone who once worked in an automobile factory might now work at a car wash, resulting in a major reduction of household income. Additionally, rather than respond to the strong pressure of union demands for increased salaries and benefits, many Northern manufacturing companies moved to other parts of the country, provoking antiunion sentiment in the communities they abandoned. Local governments began giving
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 6 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
tax breaks to discourage this type of relocation. Less money was then available for police, fire and garbage services. The plant closings had a spillover effect as nearby communities suffered from a loss of jobs, retail services and supplier services due to decreased demand from the closing of plants. The costs of deindustrialization infiltrated every aspect of community life. When a plant closed or laid off workers there was an increase in unemployment benefits and public assistance claims, child abuse, drug use and bank foreclosures of residential and commercial property. Duncan (2010) confirmed the negative effects of deindustrialization on the American dream. A secure middle class lifestyle was at one time achieved through the manufacturing base which is only a fraction of what it was and will not return. Blacks have been especially affected by deindustrialization because their homes were increasingly concentrated within central cities and in those regions of the country where plant closings and economic dislocation have been most pronounced (Bluestone, 1983). Since the 1970s this problem had continued unabated, as Black, Kolesnikova and Taylor (2010) documented the employment patterns for Black men over a 30 year period. The labor force participation rate of Black men decreased overall but was more pronounced in cities that had a strong manufacturing sector. In Detroit 56% of Black men participated in the manufacturing sector in 1970. That number shrank to 26% by 2000. What was even more depressing is the number of Black men who were out of the workforce and permanently unemployed was 7% in 1970 and had skyrocketed to 23% in 2000. In deindustrialized inner cities the image of the hard working Black men had been replaced by unemployed men who were resigned to a bleak future (Wilson, 1996 as referenced in Peck, 2010).
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 7 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
Urban Renewal The Federal Urban Renewal Act of 1949 opened the door for the wholesale destruction of the Black community (Fullilove, 2004). Urban renewal was to achieve clearance of blight and slum areas so that they could be dedicated for better uses. Urban renewal projects destroyed entire blocks to make way for convention centers, apartments and highways to the suburbs. Included in this plan was the intentional downsizing of central cities, which had been referred to as planned shrinkage. Planned shrinkage was implemented in a variety of ways including reducing public transportation, cutting back police and fire services, decreasing housing assistance programs, and curtailing sanitation services. This program set the stage for the process of contagious urban decay (Wallace & Wallace, 1997)--communities of burnt-out buildings, and families doubling and tripling up in the decreasing number of low cost apartments. The economic and political vulnerability of Black communities made them an easy target for the housing policy. It was even more vulnerable to the housing policies of the federal government because much of its energy was preoccupied in the struggles for civil rights and Black Power that were taking place at roughly the same time.
Greenberg and Schneider (1994) demonstrated that deindustrialization and contagious urban decay have helped to concentrate societys throwaway land uses in marginal neighborhoods where peoples limited political power made it virtually impossible to intervene in decisions about land use. This land use pattern was seen in the disproportionate amount of LULUs--locally unwanted land use (e.g., incinerators, landfills, power plants, airports, refineries, highways, prisons and low income housing
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 8 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
projects); and TOADs--temporary obsolete abandoned derelict sites (e.g., deserted factories, power plants, warehouses, railways and canal lines, mines, and garbage-strewn vacant lots). The authors concluded that LULUs and TOADs produced landscapes with a greater propensity for violence and self-destruction. Wallace and Wallace (1997) found the withdrawal of fire and police services in New York Citys South Bronx area resulted in population outflows, loss of housing and serious public health problems. As the population of the South Bronx decreased from 490,000 to 237,000 during 1970-1985, the number of welfare residents increased from 79,000 to 93,000. The South Bronx served as a notorious example of hyperghettoization (Wacquant & Wilson, 1993) in which only the poorest and most destitute were left inhabiting the neighborhood in decline. In these communities researchers had shown a disproportionate exposure to environmental risks. Many of these communities had been systematically selected for the location of noxious facilities (Brulle and Pellow, 2006). In spite of the economic boom in the late 90s, many of these communities had been left out remaining impoverished and politically powerless (State of Cities 1999, 3rd Annual Report, http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/soc99.pdf). African American communities had long been segregated within metropolitan regions, but the phenomenon of hyperghettoization continued unabated since the 1970s. After World War I and the prosperity that followed, African American communities flowered. While the Harlem Renaissance was the best-known example, a similar kind of social and cultural awakening happened in other cities as well. In addition to the outpouring of artistic expression, there was a growth in business and expansion in organizations and associations of all kinds, and development of an urban village ethos
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 9 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
that provided care for the needy, socialized children and transmitted shared values (Fullilove, 2001). Wilson (1996) explained how the ghettoes of today were much worse off than the ghettoes of a generation ago because of joblessness. Joblessness and permanent unemployment had produced behaviors reflecting despair, futility and despondency, such as perpetuating robbery or men not marrying the mothers of their children. Holzer (2007) building on Moynihans thesis found that the increase in single parent female headed household was positively related to the increase in Black male unemployment. Sullivan (1989) compared African American, Hispanic and White fathers response to marrying the mothers of their first child. He found current employment status and perception of gainful future employment influenced fathers decision to marry these women. The proliferation of single parent households has led to a break down in social capital networks and the loss of gainfully employed role models (Wacquant & Wilson, 1993). Impoverished households embedded in a commercially abandoned locality watched pimps, drug pushers, unemployed street people and ex-offenders replace working fathers as predominant socializing agents. This loss of fathers in the household and workingmen in the community has had adverse effects for the educational achievement of African Americans (Western & Wildeman, 2009). Marcus Garvey was ahead of his time when he predicted:
It is only a question of time when the Negro, economically dependent as he is on the white man, would be forced to the wall, and that the solution of the problem in the future would not be so much by wholesale killing or wiping out Negro populations by fire or force of arms, but a wellorganized plan of economic starvation (Garvey, 1969).
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 10 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
10
The economic starvation that Garvey talked about was the joblessness and permanent unemployment creating hyperghettoization. Martin (1978, as referenced in Willhelm, 1986, p.246) described one of the consequences of hyperghettoization, stating, Our poor blacks unemployed and young are already filling our jails. Deindustrialization and the urban renewal in the 50s, 60s and 70s had led to the break-down of the Black community which paved the way for a new technology to explode its destructiveness in the 80s, crack cocaine.
Crack Cocaine and Its Offspring: Gun Violence and Incarceration Crack cocaine use and distribution became popular in cities that were in social and economic chaos. Adler (1995) showed how the Chambers brothers in Detroit established a lucrative crack business as a rational economic choice. Murphy, Waldorf & Reinarman (1990) asserted that the crack industry had been investing in inner city neighborhoods precisely when legitimate industries had been moving out and taking jobs with them. Unlike most legal industries, the illicit drug business was an equal opportunity employer offering good pay to the unskilled. Crack distribution at the street level was an equal opportunity employer allowing youth to be primary entrepreneurs rather than supporters of adult distributors (Villamy, 1994, p. 52). The technological advance that allowed crack to be cooked from powder cocaine made it possible for almost anyone to get involved. Simon and Burns (1997) credited crack cocaine with, creating a freelance market with twenty-year-old wholesalers supplying seventeenyear-old dealers. Anyone could ride the Amtrak or the Greyhound to New York and come back with a package (p.63). However, the story of crack extended way beyond
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 11 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
11
street level distribution and consumption. Agar (2003) traced the development of the cocaine business out of Nixons War on Drugs policy in the early 70s that involved destroying Mexican marijuana growing areas with paraquat. Columbia took over the marijuana business and the network that was established for marijuana was later used to ship cocaine from Columbia to the US. The Columbian cocaine distributors used fear and violence to gain control of the government (Brooke, August 27, 1989). Evans (May 3, 2002) detailed collaboration between Colombias military, which was largely funded by the United States, and major drug traffickers. Bought to Light (Eclipse Comics, 1988) described the US secret war in which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) transported cocaine to the US in order to buy guns for the anti-communists (ie. Contras). Webb (1998) further indicted the CIA for setting up the crack trade in Los Angeles. Sloan, a former gang member, confirmed Webbs indictment of the CIA in the HBO documentary, Bastards of the Party (Faqua, 2006), by explaining the direct connection between the Contras and drug gang distributors in Los Angeles. While the network for importing powder cocaine to the US cant be limited to one particular source, what had been made evident is that the massive increase of cocaine to the US that gave rise to the crack epidemic didnt come from inner city backyards. Villamy (1994) discussed a survey by the U.S. Department of Education, which found that dealers approached one out of seven school children from inner city communities to sell crack. The growth of the crack industry had been correlated with the growth in the homicide rate of Black men that according to article, Fight Guns Not Drugs (1990) reached levels in some areas that now exceed the death rate of American
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 12 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
12
soldiers in Vietnam (p.24). By the mid 90s crack seemed to be going out of style and crack-taking on the decline but the guns that crack bought into the underworld are still there (p. 52). These guns were no longer solely a feature of the underworld. In urban public schools guns became a rite of passage for youth seeking to gain respect. Donaldson (1993) reported that 75 students died from gun violence over a fouryear period (1987-1991) in an urban high school in East New York, Brooklyn. Field workers, 10 years later, talked with people on the street near this school. Some voluntarily lifted their shirts to show the marks of violence from the early 90s (Fullilove, 2003). East New York, Brooklyn, had suffered from deindustrialization, contagious housing decay, and hyperghettoization. Housing projects separated by burnt-out buildings and vacant lots were the markers of a community fractured by redlining and disinvestment from public and private organizations. Compounding the issues of spatial dislocation and disinvestment was the proliferation of the crack industry and its offspring, guns. In the early 90s homicide was the leading cause of death for New York City youth aged 15-19. By 1993 East New York had led New York City in the number of homicides.
Ten years later the gun violence in East New York had been drastically reduced (Brick, 2003). Other marginalized communities had suffered the ravages of the crack epidemic and gun violence years later than East New York. While the gun violence was not as severe as it was 10 years ago in East New York, the crack epidemic and gun violence had continued unabated in other marginalized communities throughout the country. Few schools addressed the reality of crack and guns that were a major part of youth culture and are thus apart of schools. The gun violence within the Black
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 13 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
13
community made it an overwhelming challenge to educate young people when their peers and family members are dying and or being incarcerated en masse (Wells-Wilborn, 1994).
Effects of Gun Violence and Incarceration on Youths Experiencing violence in the community affected young peoples experience at school. Community violence threatened students sense of safety and well-being in school, which in turn led to undermining their ability to perform well academically. In some communities the effects of violence were so overwhelming that the stated goals of an educational program could not be realized (Penn-Towns, 1996). Co-victimization was described as the experience of witnessing violent assault on another person (Shakoor and Chalmers, 1991). African Americans adolescents who suffered from co-victimization displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition grief, resulting from the death of a family member or a close friend, distracted adolescents from achieving academically. Fullilove (2003) noted the effects of violence on the Jefferson High School students in her study as, Numbing, hypersensitivity to sound, and .mental states young people described that appear to have resulted from their exposure to violence (p. 48). One of the major consequences of seeing violence was that it could lead young people to doing violence against others or themselves, as evidenced by suicide, use of alcohol and narcotics, etc. (Garrett, 1997). Without the proper social mechanism to redirect or mediate the violence, a cycle of more violence may be created. As the number of stressors increased during adolescence, adolescent functioning deteriorated. The
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 14 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
14
normal developmental stress during adolescence was exacerbated by the increasing rate of divorce and single-parent families, growing rates of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, intra-family violence, child abuse and exposure to violent crime (Berton and Stabb, 1996). In addition to addressing the stress of violence, students had been facing violences flip side incarceration. Wacquant (2000) blamed Reagans policies that dismantled the social welfare system in favor of the incarceration, thus leading to a four-fold increase in the size of the prison population from1975 to 2000. Mauer (1999), as referenced in Impacts of Incarceration on the African American Family (Harris and Miller, 2003) described this dramatic increase in incarceration as the Race to Incarcerate. Most of these prisoners came from the enforcement of drug laws, which from 1980 to 1987 was a twelve fold increase in prisoners serving time on drug-related charges (Human Rights Watch, 2000). Bourgois (2003) felt that todays unemployed high school drop-outs are most likely to smoke marijuana. He found that 87% of marijuana arrests in 1997 were for simple possession and this has contributed to the ever increasing incarceration rate. He concluded that the drug policy is turning relatively harmless weed smoking teenagers into alienated, hardened criminals, thus condemning taxpayers to carry the weight for a generation of violent, angry, unemployable adults. In the report entitled, The Black Family and Mass Incarceration, Western and Wildeman (2009) concluded that: prison has become a normal life event for Black men with low education; parental imprisonment has become a normal part of the social experience of the children of these men; and mass incarceration has become selfsustaining. Murray and Farrington (2005) explained that research has shown the effects
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 15 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
15
of parental incarceration on childrens behavior include: depression, hyperactivity, aggressive behavior, withdrawal, regression, sleep problems, eating problems, running away, truancy, poor school grades and delinquency. In their experiment comparing children who were separated from parents by divorce and death to children of incarcerated parents, they found that children of incarcerated parents were more likely to exhibit antisocial behavior and crime later in life. Mass incarceration created more mass incarceration because the removal of parents from the home causes a removal of social control which can be a more powerful deterrent to crime than the police (Roberts, 2004). The irony of mass incarceration had been that families and children should be seeking help but isolate themselves because of the stigma associated with incarceration (Meares, 2004). Many children went through life in which violence, incarceration, drug dealing and unemployment had become part of the everyday landscape that they must walk through. This paper now turned to the methodology and results of this study, which will give us insight into how the Nationhood School mediated the effects of the community
context in which no child has been left unscathed.
Qualitative methodology was used because it enabled exploration of the lived experiences of a group of people from their own perspective (Denzin & Lincoln, 2002). The method was centered on the idea that ordinary people can generate knowledge that is as valid and valuable as knowledge generated by the more traditional research methods. The study was conducted during the 1999--2002 school years with follow up conversations in the 2005 school year. The design consisted of the following: informal
r Fo
Pe
METHODOLOGY
er
Re
vi ew
Urban Education
Page 16 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
16
conversations with students and staff; participation in related school activities; nine indepth individual interviews of teachers, students and parents; four focus groups of students, one for teacher, one for parents; and six months of participant observation and review of artifacts.
Role of the Researcher The qualitative strategy of immersion at the Nationhood school would be similar to being invited to eat dinner at an African Americans house. An invitee who refused to eat, sit down and become familiar would be seen as insulting to the hosts. Being invited to do research at the Nationhood school and refusing to participate in the sharing of information and avoid familiarity by being a distant observer would be seen as insulting. In addition, it is important to remember that African Centered educators had been suspicious about academic research because there is a long tradition of research for colonial subjugation, imperialism and racism (Oyewummi, 2002). For example, academia and science had a long tradition of racism in trying to justify African Americans underachievement based on genetics (Gould, 1996). As a researcher, suspicions by African Centered educators towards academics had to be acknowledged (Dancy, Wilbur, Talashek, Hbonner & Barnes-Boyd, 2004) by showing humility and sharing in analysis and critique that aids in the building and developing of the school. In a study about women and leadership in Africa, Ngunjiri (2007) assumed the position of supplicant learner, in which she put aside her expert stance to become a humble learner. This position allowed the people who were apart of the study to feel comfortable around her. She listened intently and did not assume that her expert degree
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 17 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
17
status made her an authority about the life of the people in the study. Supplicant learners entered a cultural scene and became a learner. If we are not out to learn from the people we are studying then why go into the field at all?
Data Collection Strategies The researcher sought to develop a rich and detailed description of The Nationhood School by immersing himself with an open mind in the culture to be studied, attempting to suspend all preconceived notions and judgments (Roper & Shapira, 2000). Such immersion has been commonly referred to as ethnographic research. People everywhere learned their culture by making inferences, which involves reasoning from evidence. According to Spradley (1979), cultural inferences were made based on three sources: a) what people say; b) the way people act; and c) the artifacts people use. I used the following methods for data collection: 1. 2. 3.
What people say: interviews, focus groups, informal conversations?
The way people act: observations; and
The artifacts people use: observations and review of archival data.
Using multiple data collection strategies in qualitative research has been referred to as triangulation (Bratlinger, Jimenez, Klingner, Pugach,, & Richardson, 2005). Preissle and LeCompte (1993) made reference to the ethnographer as a methodological omnivore, (p.232) continuously employing various collection strategies to improve the reliability of the data. This study aimed for such multiple strategies in an effort to get the richest description of the school.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 18 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
18
The collection of meaningful data from participants through observations and interviews might contradict data that is presented in the brochures. The revelation of sensitive and contradictory information by participants was facilitated through the researchers immersion in the field (Hirshfeld, 2007). Qualitative studies that had been conducted with marginalized populations in chaotic environmental contexts placed researchers in dialectical position in which they have to choose between a value neutral research stance and support for the participants (Geelan, 2003).
r Fo
Data Analysis
Data Analysis brought order, structure and meaning to the mass of collected data. The goal of which was to determine the categories, relationships and assumptions that inform the stakeholders (i.e., parents, staff, students) views of this school. Open coding which consisted of identifying themes and concepts in the interview and field notes data allowed the researcher to go from piles of transcribed notes to the findings (Marks, Nesteruk, Sewanson, Garrison & Davis, 2005). My original guiding themes were functional community, extended teacher roles and culturally relevant pedagogy. As more interviews and focus groups were conducted participants talked beyond my guiding themes. Students discussed the issue of violence, school shootings, police shootings, neighborhood shootings, shootings of family members, drug dealing, incarceration, hiphop and mental health issues. Dyregrov, Dyregrov and Magne (2000) experienced participants going beyond the research design when researching populations that have experienced trauma. Silverman (2000) discussed the dangers of using a conceptual grid that directs attention away from uncategorized activities. The conceptual grid was
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 19 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
19
especially problematic for marginalized populations who are experiencing trauma. These situations were complex and did not fit into neatly pre-determined categories. As the research went further along, the researcher came to the realization that fitting the research into my original categories would be like chopping off bits and discarding important pieces of information. Any effort aimed at simplify the multiple realities of the school and the chaotic environmental context will lose somethingthe challenge is to avoid losing the vital things (Geelan, 2003, p.3). Geelan (2003) discussed life in the school as made up of lived stories and the job of the narrator (i.e. researcher) is to write up those stories. Thus the writing up of the research based on a pre-determined categories was abandoned in favor or writing a narrative that attempts to make sense out of the complexities of the Nationhood school and the chaos of the environmental context.
Rationale for the Use of Qualitative Research
Bronfenbrenners ecological theory (1989) highlighted the everyday context and its relationship to the developmental process of children. Children, particularly adolescents, growing up in poor urban areas frequently encountered a number of stressors that place them at an increased risk for developmental and adjustment problems. By the time many inner city youth reach adolescents, they have been exposed to crime, violence, drugs, family disruption, abuse and neglect (Evans, 2005). The environmental context afforded many urban African American youth has been characterized by high crime rates, poor housing stock, challenged schools, limited neighborhood resources and families under economic strain (Hawkins, Laub, Lauritsen & Cothern, 2000). The research and the resultant educational interventions had not addressed these issues (Ginwright, 2004).
r Fo
Pe
er Re vi ew
Urban Education
Page 20 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
20
By capturing the experiences of the actors within the setting, qualitative research offered the opportunity to explore the complexities concerning African American school achievement in an inner city. Quantitative analysis based on a school years test scores, attendance, number of expulsions, and number of disciplinary actions could give an accurate analysis of student performance relative to standardized measures. However, a major shortcoming of quantitative analysis that used pre-test post-test analysis is that it said nothing about the teachers, programs and the environmental context that surrounded the school. To capture the complexity of environmental context and its effects on the attitudes, beliefs and thoughts of actors within the school, this study used qualitative methods. These methods consisted of detailed descriptions of school events and actors (students, teachers/staff, and parents); passive and active observations of the actors within the school; direct quotations from the interviews and focus groups; and descriptive walks in the
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
neighborhood.
Quantitative research has excluded the voice of youth. Many of the studies of neighborhood research had relied on governmental reports like the census that focused on adults (Schaefer-McDaniel, 2007). Neighborhood research that has been undertaken to understand its effects on children has not used their voices (Curtis, Dooley & Phillips, 2004). Chawla (2002) found that youth pay attention to neighborhood characteristics and are valuable informants about their neighborhoods. A major part of this research involved formal and informal data collection with youth about their perceptions of school and the environmental context. Immersion allowed me to move into their world and gain the perspectives of the stakeholders in the school, particularly the youth. The students
vi
ew
Page 21 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
21
took pride in knowing that their voices were an intricate part of the research.
The Nationhood School This school was selected because of its exemplary reputation for quality education amongst African Centered Schools. Operating for more than 25 years, the school was developed by educational practitioners who had a track record for educating inner city African Americans. In the northeastern city, named the Main City for the sake of the study, members of an organization called the Nationhood Movement decided to organize a school. In an interview Baba A, one of the original founders, stated, Black children were being taught from a non-African perspective. To compound matters, the public schools were failing miserably. The Nationhood Movement wanted to provide a quality education from an African Centered perspective. It wanted to develop students who possessed skills to build independence for people of African descent. Through the support of residents in Main City for over 35 years, the Nationhood School had thrived, going from three students to over 150 students in pre-K through the 8th grade. Over 90% of graduates from the Nationhood school had gone on to postsecondary education. This school had an exemplary reputation for quality amongst public and private schools in this city.
Originally the categories functional community, extended teacher roles and
r Fo
RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 22 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
22
culturally relevant pedagogy were systematically investigated for. However, these factors dismissed the environment outside of the school and its effects on students. Instead of using the pre-determined categories, a narrative was written that described the environmental context of the school and looked at how the school mediates this context. The parents, students, teachers and leaders of the school were acutely aware of the challenges between the community context and the schools pedagogy that worked to mediate these challenges.
From the downtown area it was about a two-mile walk to the school. I started to walk from downtown on Martin Luther King Boulevard, a major street in Main City, to the school. It was warm enough for a light jacket. It was 5pm and getting darker each minute. The housing stock within a three block radius of the school consisted of row houses, ranging from abandoned and dilapidated to clean and well kept. The monotony of row houses was broken up by a fast food chicken shop, a Chinese fast food shop, a barbershop, two mom and pop corner stores, three liquor stores, and two churches. The remainder of the neighborhood, within a half-mile radius, consisted of row houses, a public elementary school, a public housing project, a hospital and industrial buildings. Next to the Nationhood Schools pre-school location was a warehouse that marked the edge of a small industrial area within the neighborhood. At six pm the warehouses looked closed. In fact, some of the surrounding industrial buildings looked as if they had never been open. After passing the deserted warehouses, five young African American men were spotted standing on the corner, next to a mom and pop store on King Boulevard, each looking like they were in their late teens. A car pulled up carrying one man and two
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 23 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
23
teenage girls, all white. One of the young men rushed out to the car. The white male driver of the car lowered the window and the two of them began speaking. The young man from the corner handed the driver what looked like a small package and the three white people rode off. The three white people in the car looked to the researcher as if they were buying drugs. This scene was repeated twice in a 20-minute period with different cars. Walking up the hill on King Boulevard, I saw the old brick building the school is housed in. The parking lot was empty. There was no litter on the grounds, which stood in contrast to the Boulevard. The fence guarding the parking lot had a rip in it, the size of a little boy. The lights in the school were out. The observations at the school had been taking place for more than two months but this was the first time I had walked through the neighborhood just to observe. After seeing what maybe described was an inadequate structure for the school and physical deterioration of the neighborhood, I longed to raise
money in order to build a new school.
The environment that was encountered walking through the neighborhood had been destabilized through years of dis-investment. In conversations with Baba A and Baba O, two members of the Nationhood Movement who were a part of the team of original founders of the Nationhood School, they confirmed this assertion about the neighborhood. Baba A talked about the former vibrancy of Main City, driven by the manufacturing sector. Baba A cited the 1970s as the period in which the processes of deindustrialization and white flight led to the declining economy of the city. In an interview Baba A described the effects of these economic changes on the neighborhood: In the 70s the factories were just starting to close down. White people were just starting to move out. At that time this neighborhood was
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 24 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
24
considered the good part of town. At that time even Martin Luther King Boulevard was a pretty nice street... If you drove around at dark it was a ghost town, quiet and peaceful. During the day, downtown had life to it. You could go downtown and shop. There was a major industry that people would work. [G Motors] was a big job for people. They had [F Steel]. A person could drop out of high school and work in these factories and was making as much as or more than a person with a college degree. You could get a house, raise a family and live comfortably with a small amount of education. As long as you were ready willing and able to work, you could live well in Main City.
Baba O elaborated on the past employment situation in Main City. Long-term unemployment in the community during the Nationhood Movement (late 1960s to the early 1970s) was not as widespread as it is today: A lot of families were able to buy houses and send their children to college. Men who worked in factory jobs were able to provide for their families. Unemployment did not exist for such a large amount of ablebodied men. You did not see healthy Black men standing on the corners in the middle of the day with nothing to do. Bums and street people were the only ones that did not work. Baba O explained how the present day long-term unemployment caused idle time and has been viewed as a major cause of social dysfunction amongst Black men: These men standing on the corners today have nothing to do. Idle time is a major killer of Black men. With nothing constructive to do, many of our young men are standing around waiting for nothing but trouble. When you have idle men with nothing to do they start to prey on those in the community who are trying to do something with their lives.
Baba A talked about how the closing of factories led to the housing decay. This housing decay enabled illegal drug use: When the factories closed and people [white] started moving out, many houses became vacant. In fact some of these houses have stayed vacant for almost a generation. Today these vacant houses have become the perfect place for crack-heads and prostitutes. Baba A described how drug use and dealing has changed since the 1970s:
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 25 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
25
The major drug at that time [70s] was marijuana and cocaine with a little bit a heroin. The difference between that and the crack today was that there were places you would go and junkies would hang out. It wasnt every corner with a drug posse. In order to get drugs you had to know someone or know where to go. Drugs were not so much out in the open. The violence was not there. You did not have kids on the corner. Most of the dealers were from mid 20s and up.
Baba A, talked about the increased level of violence that came from the drug trade. This increased level of violence and other social dysfunction that stemmed from the lack of community amongst todays drug dealers. This lack of community had spread to include other community folks. Baba A, talked about how the lack of community became contagious:
Todays drug dealers dont care about the neighborhood, like many of our people today, they have no sense of community. Back in the days, drug dealers were not trying to draw a lot of attention because it was bad for business. Shooting up the block, having junkies rob people, all these things were bad for business because it would bring in the police. You didnt want your mama or your little sister selling themselves to get high. Todays drug dealers just dont give a damn.
Baba A and Baba O saw young mens act of drug dealing as a failure to understand their cultural greatness. Through their work at the school, they sought to inculcate students with an understanding of their cultural greatness or our true history. A lack of understanding of their true history has led many African Americans to fail to fulfill their true calling (lifes ambitions). In an interview, an eighth grade male student described the connection between drug dealing and knowing ones history: Those guys standing on the corner are out there because they dont know their true history. They are out there selling poison to their people. They dont know that instead of selling drugs they could be running a business. When you truly know your history, you know you are capable of anything... When I grow up I want to be a lawyer and help defend Black people who are being denied their legal rights.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 26 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
26
This quotation expressed a view of the causal relationship between drug dealing and not understanding ones cultural greatness. This causal relationship was believed to be one of the main reasons leading to criminal acts, like drug dealing.
African Centered Ideology: An Oasis in the Landscape of Despair The environment within the school was designed as a cultural landscape, filled with images of African and African American culture. The dress of the staff and students complimented the landscape by wearing styles that expressed pride in being a person of African descent. Another key aspect of the cultural landscape was the affirmations and songs during the morning Unity Circle, which celebrated the implementation of the
schools philosophy.
On the first floor hung a banner spelling the words Nationhood School in the colors of the Black Nationalist flag (red, black and green). These colors were commonly associated with Black pride and Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Visitors to the principals office saw posted newspaper articles about community events such as a book signing by Omar Tyree. The signing was held in a bookstore owned by an alumnus of the school. Another article highlighted an alumnus achieving in high school softball while maintaining an A average. The last article highlighted a church-sponsored dinner to raise money for a homeless center of which one of the schools parents was the director. Students wore uniforms of red, black and green. The school shirt was a green long sleeve shirt with a red and black insignia of the Nationhood School. Most of the
r Fo
Pe
er Re vi ew
Page 27 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
27
students wore black or dark colored pants. The adult staff wore clothes with African designs and prints, commonly referred to as dashikis. The staffs hairstyles consisted of either dreadlocks, braids or cleanly shaven baldheads. In addition, the female staff wore head wraps or a type of hat referred to as a crown. The uniforms, the teachers hairstyles and the wearing of traditional African clothes were chosen as an expression of African heritage. The room next to the office had a large black and white poster of the African leader, Kwame Nkrumah, and a banner over the picture that read, Kwame Nkrumah Class-Mama P. The remainder of the wall was covered with math tests for the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, each with 100% in red ink. Next to those were worksheets in reading comprehension for the fourth grade, also graded 100%. Next to the reading comprehension multiple choice test were essay questions for the fifth and sixth grades marked A. Besides the pictures and articles promulgating awareness of African and African American cultures, the school community valued traditional grading and testing. Mama P, the director and teacher of the Kwame Nkrumah class (grades 4 through 6), expressed the importance of tests:
I give a lot of tests and our children do pretty well. In fact they would do better if they were not as cockythis is a test-centered culture. From elementary school through college our children are bombarded with tests. These tests are not the determinants of what our children really know. But they are the gatekeepers of opportunities. In order to prepare our kids to be able to get into positions of power we have to prepare them for the rigors of this test-centered culture.
Independent thinking was illustrated through a row of colorful pictures under the title We Are All Inventors, hung next to the graded tests. Hand-drawn pictures presented the various inventions that students had created, including a Solar Oven, a
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 28 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
28
Motor Generator Flashlight, an Earsaver for Listening to Music, a Hair Brush Cranker that brushes and combs hair while conditioning, an All Natural Acne Skin Conditioner Cream, and a Healer Juicer. Another important aspect of the schools values as represented in its decor was the connection between the historical struggle of African Americans and the present day struggle. For example, a white banner with black magic marker letters spelling Rap Against Police Brutality featured essays summarizing a song by rap artists Common Sense, Talib Kweli, De La Soul, and the RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. The rap protested the police shooting of Amadou Diallo, a Black man who lived in the Bronx. These artists were considered conscious rappers in contrast to the heavily media influenced mainstream rap, which glorifies materialism, sex and violence. Conscious rappers have used their lyrics to promote knowledge and betterment of the Black community and mankind (Marable, 2002). As an eighth grade student commented on mainstream rap: I believe that the mainstream media promotes rap music that glorifies materialism but tries to downplay rap music that challenges the system, rap that tries to say something positive. All the negative stuff gets put in the videos and the raps on the radio, so that we will think all rap is negative.
This view of rap music reflected the values of some of the families two of whom are rap artists. The presence of parents who consider themselves conscious rap artist facilitated its use in the curriculum. I was talking about the students essays on Rap Against Police Brutality to an eighth grade student who said: You see this guy in the picture, referring to a rap artist pictured as one of the artist who made the Rap Against Police Brutality; his daughter goes to this school. You know this artist __________ (a conscious rap group from late eighties early nineties whose name is not revealed), he has a son in this school.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 29 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
29
There was a concerted effort to steer students away from the mainstream media hip-hop by displaying conscious hip-hop on the walls of the school. The mainstream mediainfluenced hip-hop was seen as antithetical to the interests of African Americans, as Baba A, one of the original founders of the school, stated: The music industry is like a Nazi organization that controls this country. The white man controls our consumer attitudes. The media will make our youth go out and kill each other for a pair of $200 sneakers. The money from those sneakers comes from our children and makes other races of people rich...They make the music videos so hypnotic with flashing dreams, big cars, sexy women, violence, power and respectthe music gives them (youth) false images that are far from being real. It is something the major labels have figured out. The appetite for materialism was being conveyed through rap music controlled by the white man for the purpose of diverting the attention of youth away from societys problems (The Black Dot, 2005). Another eighth grade student made a statement about
the control of the rap industry:
Well like, Dead Prez, they just came out with a CD, their mind-set is on freeing African people, because the title of their CD is called, Lets Get Free. So, they are trying to free African mind-sets, but at the same time the music industry, which is controlled by the white man, is not going to let them do everything that they want to do. So they have to make a more negativity type of rap to get their point across.
Mama P, an African Centered entertainer who performed with a group that garnered international recognition for music that critiqued social issues, acknowledged the influence of the mainstream media on students and the need for intervention: If they come from a household that is very in tuned with the fact the media is taking control of their households, and makes sure the media stays where it should be. If you let it take over your household, your kids will be usurped by the media. It makes you want things; it will make you want this and that. At this school we spend a lot of time discussing with the
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 30 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
30
students the effects of the media. We want our students to see beyond the messages that the media tries to instill in your mind.
Our-Story The Nationhood School was independently funded, relying upon tuition from parents. The school was wary about receiving monies from foundations and or government entities. Taking monies from foundations and or government entities was seen as subjecting the school to the will of the government whose interest are not in tune with African Centered education. Baba A, one of the founders of the school, was proud to emphasize that the school relied on tuition from parents as its primary source of money. The trade-off between not receiving government monies was that the school has more autonomy in choosing its educational philosophy and practices than public schools. However, the school couldnt afford many things that were considered commonplace in a well-funded public school (eg. gymnasium, nursing office, playground, etc.). This autonomy enabled the school to practice the principle of Kujichagulia--self determination: to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves instead of being defined, named and spoken for by others (Karenga, 1981). Every morning the school celebrated independence by creating its own songs and pledges. These songs were sung every day during the opening ceremony, Unity Circle. In the words of Baba R: The Unity Circle--we do it first thing in the morning...They [students] go back to their homes where what we teach here is not necessarily enforced. They go back to communities where what we teach is not necessarily embraced. So when they come into the building in the morning it is like you have been away so lets get you in the right frame of mind and lets remind you of what your responsibilities are as an African person. So what that does is from a mind set perspective of course we sing the National black anthem by James Weldon Johnson, the South African anthem Nkosi Sekeleli--Afrika and several other pledges that reinforce our unity. It gets them in the right mindset to go into the rest of the day.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 31 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
31
When asked about the importance of singing the African American and the South African national anthem, an eighth grade student replied: Its important because the white people they have their national anthem, and they know that they have someone who they can identify with. They can identify with the history of America. If we sang the white national anthem that would mean that just their history and not our history is important. So we sing our national anthem, so that we recognize our history.
Another seventh grade student made a comment about our own pledge during Unity Circle:
I think our own pledge we do in the morning is to give thanks to our ancestors and the struggles that they went through. The reason why we dont do the pledge of allegiance is because it was made for like white people. I am not saying it is a racist thing but it never tells of us as an African people.
The cultural landscape of the school, including its explicit effort to create its own songs and affirmations, struggled to offset the influence of the media and physical environment of the neighborhood. The school acknowledged the influence of rap music and instead of trying to ignore its influence; the school attempted to re-direct students towards the positive and activist side of hip-hop music. More importantly the school differentiated between hip-hop and the radio by attempting to emphasize activism amongst rappers. This was complemented by some of the schools parents who were hip-hop artists from the conscious genre and served as role models.
Functional Community The Nationhood School was a small close-knit community in which people shared
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 32 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
32
similar values and treated each other like family. This embodied the notion of functional community. Baba R discussed his role in terms of family: We definitely have a family atmosphere. You have a large core group of parents who have been around a while. When you come to the Nationhood School we have heard the phrase it takes a village to raise a child. We take that literally. The 27 to 28 boys who are here. The way I view it is as if I have 27 to 28 sons. My son is in the program and it is not just about him. Of course they call us Baba, which means father. So from my perspective, I take that seriously. The Mamas and Babas saw their job as raising children, which led them to play an extended role beyond their job descriptions. As Baba R stated: When you work in this type of environment you are father to many, you are counselor to many. So you wear many hats. If you want to work in an environment like this you have to be ready to go beyond that job description. If you stay focused on the job description you wont go outside the box. You gonna miss a lot. You come into the building and the children they cant wait to see you. But thats reciprocal because I cant wait to see them. So when I am gone for a day or two as I was last week, I miss their presence...Seeing the situation our community is in, it is time for change. If you go back to Reconstruction when we had our own schools, the level of expectation was high. We have allowed people from other communities to come in and water down our schools...If we start to think outside the box, then we could change the role of school...This might mean opening the school up to the community on Saturdays. Teachers extended roles led them to participate in gender-separated after school group counseling sessions called, Brother to Brother, Sister to Sister. These groupcounseling sessions were designed to mediate the challenges from the environmental context that students face. Many of these sessions included inviting community speakers for lectures, and reading books and articles. One of the adolescent young female students selected a book for the Sister to Sister group discussion by Ayanla Vanzant (1999) entitled, Dont Give It Away: A Book of Self Awareness and Self-Affirmation for Young Women. The book led to discussions about the issues of sexuality and self-esteem. The
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 33 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
33
researcher being a male was able to participate in some of the Brother-to Brother Groups. During one session students were practicing a step show and a rap a student wrote about the Nationhood School. They were doing this in preparation for a performance at the annual dinner. At the Nationhood School having your children attend the school was a primary motivation for teaching at the school. When eleven out of fourteen teachers send their kids to school, the division between home and school is non-existent. In addition there were significant other ties between members of the Nationhood School community. Even when parents werent related by blood, some of their connections were established when they were growing up. As one of the parents explained one such relationship: We have known each other since pre-school. We attended the same elementary, junior high school and high school. Now at the Nationhood school her daughter is older than mine so she is like an older sister to my daughter. She helps my daughter do her homework from time to time. She is really good at braiding her hair. Her daughter is almost like a second mother to my daughter.
The bonding among the community, parents, staff and students reinforced the functional community. These bonds were an essential tool in helping the school to counteract the
negative influences of the environment.
Community Celebrations
Community celebrations were tools for building community and creating bonds that reinforced the functional community. An eighth grade student who came to the school two years earlier described his feeling of gaining membership in the community of
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 34 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
34
the Nationhood School: When I first came to school, people were welcoming me, because I was new to the school. People were introducing me to everybody. That made me feel welcome. I was happy about that. The annual dinners, the Kwanzaa celebration, the graduations and the trips and all the other events that go on in the school...
Parents derived a sense of pride and satisfaction from seeing their children perform. Students experienced approval and appreciation from the parents and staff during these activities. One of the Mamas described the annual dinner: Many parents are unable to see their children every day in school. They are unable to see the benefits of this type of education... They get real excited when they see their child reciting poetry from Langston Hughes, performing in a play about Queen Nzingha, and playing African drums. The annual events show the parents that this school values their child and is culturally affirming.
In all of the schools that I previously worked in there was a lack of African American male participation. At the Nationhood School demonstrating the importance of the African American male presence in the lives of children was an implicit objective of the annual events. As one of the male parents stated during the annual dinner: I enjoy nothing more than my responsibility to be a dad. They [our children] need us so much. They look up to us for guidance... We [Black men] have to help our sistahs raise our families. For too long our sistahs have raised our boys by themselves. It is no wonder that we see Black men growing up an disrespecting Black woman. We have slept on our job... It takes a man to show a boy how to be a man....
One of the most noticeable features of the annual events was that many alumni attended. Some of the alumni had their children performing at the annual events. In the words of one of the founding members, Baba A, The annual dinner started out with 20 people and has grown to 200 to 300 people. It symbolizes our school creating its own
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 35 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
35
history... these events have created continuity between the past, present and future.
Sleepovers A question asked in each focus group was, What is your favorite thing about this school? In four of the adolescent female focus groups, and one of the male elementary school focus groups, I heard the answer, Sleepovers. I asked students, What is a sleepover? A seventh grade female student explained, A sleepover is when 30 to 50 kids stay over at one of the Babas or Mamas house. We get pizza and we watch movies. We do them on a Friday night. The best sleepover was when we had a lip sync contest one night. Everyone had a lot of fun. One time we made cookies and had an icecream and cookie eating contest. Sleepovers are always fun.
Baba R discussed sleepovers as a natural extension of the family: In this school, where teachers are called Mama and Baba, student sleeping over at our houses reinforces the idea of a family like atmosphere. I have been here for about four years and every year we have sleepovers about two to three times a year.
In an attempt to contrast Baba Rs experience at the Nationhood School with his experience students teaching, he was asked, What role did sleepovers have in the school where you did your student teaching? Baba R replied, Sleepovers were never done. If students stayed over at teachers houses, I never heard about it. That school did not have that type of atmosphere. You barely stayed after school with students, so forget about letting students into your house. Once the bell rings (i.e., end of the school day) people go about their lives.
Mama P: Caring, Mothering, Believing and Demanding
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 36 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
36
Teachers/Principals like Mama P reinforced this notion of functional community by treating students like family members. While teachers at the Nationhood School did not share a monolithic style of teaching, Mama Ps exemplary teaching style and leadership were focused on. Mama P displayed unshakable commitment and dedication in helping students reach their full potential. She worked continuously to hold the schools parents, teachers and students accountable and responsible for developing their children to their fullest potential. As the teacher of the Kwame Nkrumah class, Mama P
r Fo
explained:
The bottom line is that I know each one of these kids can do anything they want to do. I dont want them to walk out of here incapable of doing anything they want to do. Because if you dont academically have it, you will be crippled to a certain extent. I dont want anybody to be crippled when they walk out the door. I want you to have every bit of everything you need. I cover as much distance as I can. I want you to have the basic things I know you have to have and beyond that so that you will be able to weather the storm. The whole bottom line is that when they leave here, they are going to have things that are going to get them off center. I want them to be able to say, I dont walk into that, I go over this way. That is what I really want them to be able to do. Yeah they think I am mean, but cool and I am not going to take it personally.... I push them to reach their full potential.
Mama P did not allow a students background to interfere with or be an excuse for not performing academically. Mama P pushed all the students to do the best they can do. She knew that it would take determination to weather the storm or to overcome the racism and the agents of self-destruction that were present in the community of the Nationhood School. However, Mama Ps approach was not always welcomed by some of the parents. In the words of Mama P: Some parents have left the school because of the excessive amount of work. But some of these same parents, who took their kids to other schools, when I see them and ask how their kid is doing? they say, Hes
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 37 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
37
doing all right!...Ah by the way are there any openings in the school, Mama P?
Mama P had love and concern for the students and parents but love did not come without criticism. Mama P criticized some of the parents for wanting to be friends with their children, to the detriment of their educational growth: Some parents want to do everything for their children. They want to hold their hand and be their friends. I am not here for that. I am here to push you to reach your full potential. Outside of school, if we have time, we can be friends.
The process of getting kids to reach their full potential was not always a pleasant process. Some students didnt understand Mama P, as a seventh grader explained: Mama P loves everyone a lot. It is just that the way she shows it is by giving you work, and helping you get smarter and pushing you harder. See the kids in class now dont understand that. Theyre always complaining, Oh, its too hot in there. Oh, we dont want to do all this work. Well, the reason Mama P keeps the heat like that is because she doesnt want you falling asleep and getting comfortable. She doesnt like you to get comfortable. And she wants you to push yourself harder in work...They always say at the end of our flyers and things, that our children are our future. So thats why Mama P is the way she is...
In order to understand the philosophy and practice within a small school it was necessary to understand the actions of its main actors, which was the main objective of focusing on Mama P. The results have shown some of the ways in which the Nationhood School mediated the challenges from the environmental context. The next section discussed the problem of government policies that focus on in-school factors while ignoring the environmental context.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 38 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
38
THE DECONTEXTUALIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN FAILURE
African Centered schools and other successful schools for children of color in the inner city had shown that classroom and in-school environments often yielded success without changing the context of the community. The functional community, teacher attitudes like Mama P and a culturally relevant curriculum were examples of the inschool factors that worked to mediate the effects of conditional genocide. One idea that can be concluded from this study is that this particular African Centered school implemented innovative in-school strategies to help its student overcome the community context. An unintended consequence of focusing on in-school factors (ie. NCLB) had been the growth of innovative educational programs like of all-male academies and charter schools (Noguera, 2003). In the last decade a plethora of programs had come into existence that sought to close the achievement gap within challenging communities. However, the major shortcoming of this growth of innovative programs and charter schools was that the achievement gap could be closed without changing the community. LeCompte (2002) claimed that politicians favor decontextualized explanations of teaching and learning and a one size fits all solution to educational problems. Gerstl-Pepin (2006) posited that policymakers rarely set school inequities in the context social inequities. She further contended that NCLB held schools alone responsible for the achievement gap, thereby dismissing social inequity. Politicians and educational policymakers pandered the work of successful schools that overcame the
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 39 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
39
odds, proposing equalizing educational outcomes while avoiding community change. Such examples of political pandering, paraded examples of charter schools and innovative programs in impoverished poor Black and Latino neighborhoods, while favoring massive cuts in the urban public workforce and encouraging policies that contributed to the mass incarceration of the neighborhoods in which these same schools were situated. It was much cheaper, quicker and safer for politicians to tout raising test scores than to reduce long-term unemployment and reform the prison industrial complex. The mission of NCLB should not be confused with the original idea of Leave No Child Behind by the Childrens Defense Fund (CDF), a childrens advocacy organization started by Mariam Wright Edelman. In 2001, the Dodd-Miller Act to Leave No Child Behind (S.448/H.R. 936) bill was introduced to congress. This act differed from the No Child Left Behind Act, which was taken from the CDF without permission by the Bush Administration (Childrens Defense Fund, June, 2007). CDF contended that Bush had dismantled the education of children by giving tax cuts to the rich while maintaining yearly spending for the War on Iraq of billions of dollars. Many of the communities in which there was a significant achievement gap were also communities in which the useless reside. These were the communities in which politicians feign support by talking about closing the achievement gap by trying to raise test scores while ignoring long term unemployment and mass incarceration which were two manifestations of conditional genocide. Groups like CDF connected closing the achievement gap to advocacy for prison reform through its Pipeline to Prison program. Self-sustaining school reform was undermined when we constantly locking up the parents of students and the students
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 40 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
40
themselves at increasing rates. Even though violent crime in many cities across the US had been down from the days in the early nineties at the height of the crack cocaine market, the rate of incarceration remained at a record setting pace. CDFs Pipeline to Prison program illustrated that the commitment to close the achievement gap by raising test scores should not be disconnected from reforming the prison system. The ultimate consequence of decontextualized solutions to African American failure had been the disconnection between policies aimed at school improvement from policies aimed at improving the larger community. While Bush advocated NCLB as a progressive way of closing the achievement gap, money was squandered in tax breaks for the rich and chasing weapons of mass destruction. The irony was that entire schools failed and their surrounding communities remained unemployed and incarcerated. This paper concluded by suggesting the National Urban Leagues (NUL) Opportunity Compact to jumpstart urban America as an example of a strategy to close the achievement gap through fighting socioeconomic inequality and developing the community. Some of the suggestions for the NUL plan consisted of guaranteed educational access for all from head start to college; guaranteed health care; creation of an urban bank for urban infrastructure improvements; homeownership bill of rights with the creation of affordable housing; and ensuring greater minority participation in government contracts. As NULs President Morial stated, A nation that can develop the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, a nation that can create the International Monetary Fund to rebuild the world, a nation that can rally around a war in Iraq can certainly rebuild its urban communities (National Urban League, July 25, 2007).
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 41 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
41
REFERENCES
Adler, W.M. (1995). Land of Opportunity: One Familys Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Agar, M. (2003). The Story of Crack: Towards a Theory of Illicit Drug Trends. Addiction Research and Theory, 11(1), 3-29. Ainsworth, JW. (2002). Why Does It Take a Village? The Mediation of Neighborhood Effects on Educational Achievement. Social Forces, 81(1), pp. 117-152. Berton, M.W.& Stabb, S.D. (1996). Exposure to Violence and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in Urban Adolescents. Adolescence, 31(122), 489-98. Bettis, PJ. (1994). Deindustrialization and Urban Schools: Some Theoretical Considerations. Urban Review, 26(2), 75-94. The Black Dot. (2005). Hip Hop Decoded: From Its Ancient Origin to Its Modern Day Matrix. New York: MOME Publishing Inc. Black, DA, Kolesnikova, NA., & Taylor, LJ. (2010). The Economic Progress of African Americans in Urban Areas: A Tale of 14 Cities. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, 92(5), 353-379. Bluestone, B. (1983). Deindustrialization and Unemployment in America. The Review of the Black Political Economy, 17(2), 29-44. Bluestone, B. & Harrison, B. (1982). The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. New York: Basic Books. Bought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action. (1988). New York: Eclipse Comics. Bourgois, P. (2003). Crack and the Political Economy of Social Suffering. Addition Research and Theory, 11(1), 31-37. Boyd, H. (July 20-26, 2006). Its Hard Out There for a Black Man! New York, Amsterdam News, 97(30), 6. Brantlinger, E., Jimenez, R., Klingner, J., Pugach, M., & Richardson, V. (2005). Qualitative Studies in Special Education. Exceptional Children, 71(2), 195-207. Brick, M. (November 19, 2003). Shootings Stir Fears of a Backslide in East New York. New York: New York Times. p.B1.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 42 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
42
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1989). Ecological Systems Theory. In R. Vastas (Ed.) Annals of Child DevelopmentSix Theories of Child Development. Revised Formulations and Current Issues. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1-103. Brooke, J. (August 27, 1989). Colombias War: Attacking the Sovereign State of Cocaine. New York Times. Brulle, RJ & Pellow, DN. (2006). Environmental Justice: Human Health and Environmental Inequalities. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 103-124. Chawla, L. (2002). Growing Up in an Urbanizing World. London: Earthscan Unicef. Childrens Defense Fund. (June, 2007). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Defense_Fund. Curtis, L.J., Dooley, M.D. & Phillips, S.A. (2004). Child Well-Being and Neighbourhood Quality: Evidence from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Social Science and Medicine, 58,1917-1927. Dancy,, B.L., Wilbur, J., Talashek, M., Hbonner, G. & Barnes-Boyd, C. (2004). Community Based Research: Barriers to Recruitment of African Americans. Nursing Outlook, 52(5), 234-240. Delaney-Black, V., Covington, C., Odersma, SJ., Nordstrom-Klee, B., Templin, T., Ager, J., Janisse, J., & Sokolo, R. (2002). Violence Exposure, Trauma, and IQ and or/Reading Deficits Among Urban Children. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 156(3), 280285. Denzin, K.D. & Lincoln, S.L.(eds). (2002). The Qualitative Inquiry Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Donaldson, G. (1993). The Ville: Kids and Cops in Urban America. New York: Ticknot & Fields. Duncan, A. (2010). Through the Schoolhouse Gate: the Changing Role of Education in the 21st Century. Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, 24(2), 293 Dyrerov, K., Dyregrov, A. & Magne, R. (2000). Refugee Families Experience of Research Participation. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 13(3), 413-426. Eamon, MK. (2005). Social-Demographic, School, Neighborhood, and Parenting Influences on the Academic Achievement of Latino Young Adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34(2), 163-174. Educating African American Males: A Dream Deferred. (1990). Milwaukee; WI:
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 43 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
43
African American Male Task Force. Milwaukee Public Schools. ED 342829. Evans, M(ed). (May 3, 2002). War in Colombia: Guerrillas, Drugs and Human Rights in U.S.-Colombia Policy, 1988-2002. Washington, DC: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 69. Evans, R. (2005). A Special Section on the Achievement Gap: Reframing the Achievement Gap. Phi Delta Kappan, Inc., 86(8), 582. Faqua, A. (2006). Bastards of the Party. United States: HBO Documentary. Fight Guns, Not Just Drugs. (December 8, 1990). The New York Times, p.24. Francis, D. (2004). Learning from Participants in Field Based Research. Cambridge Journal of Education, 34(3), 265-277. Fullilove, M.T. (2001). Links Between the Social and Physical Environments. Childrens Environmental Health, 48 (5). Fullilove M.T. (2003). What Did Ian Tell God? School Violence in East New York. In Mark, H.M. (ed.) Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence, Washinton, D.C.: NAS Press, 198-246. Fullilove, M.T. (2004). Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It. New York: One World Ballantine Books. Garibaldi, A.M. (1992). Educating and Motivating African Americans to Succeed. Journal of Negro Education, 61(1), 4-11. Garrett, D. (1997). Co-Victimization Among African-American Adolescents. Adolescence, 32, 635-638. Garvey, A.J. (Ed) (1969). Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. New York: Atheneum. Geelan, D. (2003). Weaving Narrative Nets to Capture Classrooms: Multimethod Qualitative Approaches for Educational Research. Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers. Gerstl-Pepin, C.I. (2006). The Paradox of Poverty Narratives: Educators Struggling with Children Left behind. Educational Policy, 20(1), 143-162. Ginwright, S.A. (2004). Black in School: Afrocentric Reform, Urban Youth and the Promise of Hip-Hop. New York: Teachers College Press. Gould, S.J. (1996). The Mismeasure of Man (rev. edition). New York: Norton.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 44 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
44
Greenberg, M. & Schneider, D. (1994). Violence is American Cities: Young Black Males Is the Answer, But What Was the Question? Social Science Medicine, 39(2),179187. Harris, O & Miller, RR (eds). (2003). Impacts of Incarceration on the African American Family. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Harry, B & Klingner, J. (2006). Why Are So Many Minority Students in Special Education? : Understanding Race and Disability in Schools. New York: Teachers College Press Hawkins, D. E, Laub, J . H., Lauritsen, J. L., & Cothern, L. (2000). Race, Ethnicity, and Serious and Violent Juvenile Offending. National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Washington, DC: Department of United States Justice. Hirschfeld, K. (2007). Re-examining the Cuban Health Care System: Towards a Qualitative Critique. Cuban Affairs Quarterly Electronic Journal, 2(3). www.cubanaffairsjournal.org Holzer, HJ. (2007). The Labor Market and Young Black Men: Updating Moynihans Perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Urban Institute. Holzman, M. (2006). The 2006 State Report Card: Public Education and Black Male Students. Cambridge, MA: Schott Foundation for Public Education. Human Rights Watch 2000. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/USA Karenga, M. (1981). Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press. Leake, D. & Leake, O. (1992). Milwaukees African American Immersion Middle School: Meeting Special Needs. Schools in the Middle, 1(4), 27-30. LeCompte, M.D. (2002). The Transformation of Ethnographic Practice: Past and Current Challenges. Qualitative Research, 2(3), 283-299. Madhubuti, H.R. (1990). Black men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? : Afrikan American Families in Transition: Essays in Discovery, Solution, and Hope. Chicago: Third World Press. Marable, M. (2002, February 4). Politics of Hip-Hop-Part Two of Two. Columbus, OH: The Free Press: Speaking Truth to Power. Marks, L., Nesteruk, O., Sewanson, M., Garrison, B. & Davis, T. (2005). Religion and Health Among African Americans: A Qualitative Examination. Research on Aging,
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 45 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
45
27(4), 447-474. Martin, J. (August 5-12, 1978) "Andrew Young is Right." Nation 227, 99-101. Mauer, M. (1999). Race to Incarcerate: The Sentencing Project. National Criminal Justice Reference Services. http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=183635 Meares, TL. (2004). Mass Incarceration: Who Pays the Price for Criminal Offending? Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 522. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/522 Morgan Quitno Awards: 12th Annual Americas Safest and Most Dangerous Cities. http://www.morganquitno.com/xcit06pop.htm Murphy, S, Waldorf, D, & Reinarman, C. (1990). Drifting into Dealing: Becoming a Cocaine Seller. Qualitative Sociology, 13(4), 321-343. Murray, J. & Farrington, DP. (2005). Parental Imprisonment: Efects on Boys Antisocial Behaviour and Delinquency Through the Life-Course. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 46, 1269-78. National Urban League. (July 25, 2007) http://www.nul.org/PressReleases/2007/2007PR417.html Ngunjiri, FW. (2007). Painting a Counter-Narrative of African Womanhood: Reflections on How My Research Transformed Me. Journal of Research Practice, 3(1), M4. Nygard, J. (January 7, 2008). Gang Violence in New Jersey. Associated Content on Yahoo. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/511997/gang_violence_in_new_jersey.html?ca t=9 Noguera, PA. (2003). The Trouble With Black Boys: The Role and Influence of Environmental and Cultural Factors on the Academic Performance of African American Males. Urban Education, 38 (4), 431-459. Noguera, PA. (2001). Transforming Urban Schools Through the Investment in the Social Capital of Parents. In S. Saegert, JP Thompson and MR Warren (eds) Social Capital and Poor Communities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Oyewumi, O. (2002). Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies. Jenda: Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, 2(1).
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 46 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
46
Peck, D. (March 2010). How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America. Atlantic Online. http://georgenet.net/oracle/files/joblessera.pdf. Penn-Towns, D (1996). Rewind the World: An Ethnographic Study of Inner City African American Childrens Perceptions of Violence. Journal of Negro Education, 65(3), 375-389. Perkins, U.E. (1991). Home is a Dirty Street. Chicago: Third World Press. Pollard, D & Ajirotutu, C.S. (eds) (2000). African-Centered Schooling in Theory and Practice. Westport, Ct: Bergin & Garvey. Porter, M. (1997). Kill Them Before They Grow. Misdiagnosis of African American Boys in American Classrooms. Chicago: African American Images. Preissle, J. and LeCompte, M.D. (1993). Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research. San Diego; CA: Academic Press. Roberts, D.E. (2004). The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration. Stanford Law Review, 56, 1272-1304. Roper, J. M., & Shapira, J. (2000). Ethnography in Nursing Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schaefer-McDaniel, N. (2007). They Be Doing Illegal Things: Early Adolescents Talk About Their Inner-City Neighborhoods. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22(4), 413-436. Schiraldi, V., Holman, B. & Beatty, P. (2000). The Cost of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States. Washington, DC. Justice Policy Institute. Shakoor, BH & Chalmers, D. (1991). Co-Victimization of African American Children Who Witness Violence: Effects on Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Development. Journal of the National Medical Association, 83(3), 233-238. Silverman, D. (2000). In Analyzing Talk and Text. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edition), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Simon, D. & Burns, E. (1997). The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood. New York: Broadway Books. Spradley, J.P. (1979). Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston Inc. The State of the Cities 1999: Third Annual Report. (1999). Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development. http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/soc99.pdf).
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Page 47 of 48
Urban Education
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
47
Sullivan, M. L. (1989). Absent Fathers in the Inner City. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 501, 48-58. Talbert-Johnson, C. (2000). The Cost of Failing Minorities. School Business Affairs, 66(8), 24-27. Trenton Murders Hit All-Time High. (January 25, 2006). The Signal College of New Jersey Student Newspaper. Vanzant, A. (1999). Dont Give It Away: A Book of Self Awareness and Self Affirmation for Young Women. New York: Simon and Schuster. Villamy, E. (October 23, 1994). Redemption in Crack City. The Observer, 52. Wacquant, L & Wilson, W.J. (1993). The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City. In W.J. Wilsons The Ghetto Underclass: Social Science Perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage, 25-42. Wacquant, L. (2000). The New Peculiar Institution: on the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto. Theoretical Criminology, 4(3), 377-389. Wacquant. L. (2003). Ethnografeast: A Progress Report on the Practice and Promise of Ethnography. Ethnography, 4(1), 5-14. Wallace, R. & Wallace, D. (1997). Resilience and Persistence of the Synergism of Plagues: Stochastic Resonance and the Ecology of Disease, Disorder and Disinvestment in U.S. Urban Neighborhoods. Environment and Planning, 29, 789-804. Webb, G. (1998). Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. New York: Seven Stories Press. Wells-Wilborn, R. (1994). Project 2000: A Comparative Analysis of Locus of Control Orientation, Male Role Modeling, and Academic Achievement Among Inner City African American Children. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Washington, DC: Howard University. Western, B & Wildeman, C. (2009). The Black Family and Mass Incarceration. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621(1), 221-242. Wilhelm, S.M. (1970). Who Needs the Negro. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman. Wilhelm, S.M. (1986). The Economic Demise of Blacks in America. A Prelude to Genocide? Journal of Black Studies, 17(2), 201-254. Wilson, A. (1990). Black-on-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black SelfAnnihilation in Service of White Domination. New York: Afrikan World Infosystems.
r Fo
Pe
er
Re
vi
ew
Urban Education
Page 48 of 48
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
48
Wilson, W.J. (1996). When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Random House, Inc.
r Fo
Pe er Re vi ew

Self-Published Manuscript: The Story of The Nationhood School

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Self-Published Manuscript: The Story of The Nationhood School

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Urban Education

Manuscript ID: Manuscript Type: Keywords:

the landscape on its students.

and became a significant issue in the city.

THE LANDSCAPE OF CONDITIONAL GENOCIDE

context in which no child has been left unscathed.

What people say: interviews, focus groups, informal conversations?

The way people act: observations; and

The artifacts people use: observations and review of archival data.

Rationale for the Use of Qualitative Research

Originally the categories functional community, extended teacher roles and

RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH

money in order to build a new school.

the control of the rap industry:

negative influences of the environment.

Mama P: Caring, Mothering, Believing and Demanding

THE DECONTEXTUALIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN FAILURE

You might also like