They (don’t) care about education: A counternarrative on Black male students’ responses to inequitable schooling

Abstract

The images created of Black in our society often confine them to environments shaped by drugs, crime, athletics, and academic failure. In education, we have contributed to this negative portrait by the disproportionate amount of research that emphasizes remediation and disadvantage. (Fries-Britt, 1997, p. 65) Whatever the source, some teachers have unsubstantiated, unquestioned, and inaccurate thoughts and beliefs about Black male students; put simply, these thoughts can be harmful and quite detrimental ... Black male students can and do succeed in every type of school across the world. Their success in urban schools is not an exception. (Milner, 2007, p. 245) Anyone who takes time to read about them could confidently conclude that Black male undergraduates are troubled, their future is bleak, they all do poorly, and there is little that can be done to reverse longstanding outcomes disparities that render them among the least likely to succeed in college. (Harper, 2009a, pp. 699-700) Perspectives on Black male hopelessness and underachievement are evidenced by the numerous publications that highlight their educational upbringing in insufficiently resourced and culturally unresponsive K-12 schools (Noguera, 2003; Toldson, 2008); their low rates of high school completion (Lynn et al., 2010; Schott Foundation, 2010); their underpreparedness for the rigors of college-level work (Bonner & Bailey, 2006; Palmer, Davis, & Hilton, 2009; Palmer & Young, 2009); their patterns of academic and social disengagement, inside and outside the college classroom (Cuyjet, 1997; Kimbrough & Harper, 2006); and their low rates of baccalaureate degree attainment (Dancy & Brown, 2008; Harper, 2006a, 2012; Strayhorn, 2010). Moreover, Black male students across education levels reportedly place considerable effort into being perceived as popular and cool by their peers (Osborne, 1999; Stinson, 2006), and prioritize athletic aspirations above academic achievement (Benson, 2000; Harper, 2009b; Sellers & Kuperminc, 1997). While many of these issues are indeed quantifiable and much has been written about them, they work together to convey a dominant message in academic and public discourse pertaining to Black male students: they don't care about education. Kunjufu (1995) noted that Black boys effectively stop caring about school around the end of elementary school. He contended that teachers halt their efforts to nurture and promote achievement among Black males as early as fourth grade, thus inciting apathy and disengagement among those students. In his visits to K-12 classrooms, Kunjufu noticed that White teachers taught in ways that failed to stimulate enthusiasm for learning among Black boys, curricula at most schools were non-Africentric and disproportionately focused on memorization instead of problem solving, and few classrooms were led by Black male teachers. Visiting an average of four schools per week, Kunjufu saw no male teachers in any of the classrooms he assessed during an eight-year period. Instead, men can usually be found as janitors, physical education teachers, or administrators (p. 38), he observed. These explanatory factors for Black male students' disinterest in education have been linked to unfavorable psychological and educational outcomes (Howard, 2008; Jackson & Moore, 2008; Milner, 2007; Thomas & Stevenson, 2009), and used to help explain the shortage of Black who pursue bachelor's degrees in education and subsequently go on to become K-12 teachers (King, 1993; Shaw, 1996). As noted in a 2010 report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, only 47% of Black male students graduated from high school in 2008 with peers in their entering cohorts. Subsequently, Black men's degree attainment across all levels of postsecondary education remains alarmingly low--especially in comparison to their same-race female counterparts (see Table 1). …

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