Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 August 2003 — Page 7

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2003

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

PAGE A7

Black boys battling the biases of American education

By WILLIAM ALEXANDER Special to BET.com For any child, that first day of sqhool can be a traumatic experience. But for little Black boys, who enter school battling the biases of lowered expectations and gangster potential, trauma takes on harsher and more long-term implications. These biases - fueled largely by media stereotyping and faulty research - mean that Black boys are more frequently dubbed troublemakers and education problems, which ensures that they arc* disciplined far more harshly and far more frequently than other students. In addition, they are systematically shunted toward remedial or special education classes that stifle their progress throughout their educational lifetimes. These harsh educational realities are exacerbated by the fact that Black boys find too few teachers who look like them or who are able to understand or address the problems they face. Researcher/author Robert B.

Hill believes a heaving sea of white and Black female teacher biases, fortified by the back-up authority of mostly single femaleheaded households, has effectively “pushed out” bright Black male students from the public schools to the extent that Black nationwide suspension rates for African-American students are nearly double the size of the Black school population. Black male school teachers are needed desperately, Hill says, to break the female wall of authority that sends Black male students through a gauntlet that begins with school suspensions ind culminates with dropouts, no work, fatherless families and, too often, prison. “The teachers have low expectations for the males because they can’t relate to them,” Hill said. Hill, author of The Strength of Black Families (Re\isited), is a firm believer in the “FourthGrade Syndrome” popularized by educator/consultant Jawanza Kunjufu, which held that Black male students come into elemen-

Back to School Celebration Brightwood/Martindale/Forest Manor resident, community systemwide response steering committee, will host the fifth annual Family Fun Filled Back-to-School Carnival Celebration. The event will be on Aug. 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. at IPS School 110 located at 1740 E. 30th St. The event is held every year to encourage parents to participate in the child's educational process, provide support in the educational development of school children and to bring together community partners through collaborative efforts. For more information contact Sheryl Wise, project coordinator at (317) 789-3968. Autumn college tour Autumn Break 2003 college and university visitation sites will be Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Morris Brown College, Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College and Morehouse College. The cost for the tour is $215 and must be paid in full by Sept. 5. For mofe information call (317) 923-4581. ext. 235. . Scholarship opportunity HBCU-Central.com, the Web's most popular destination for African-American college students, has launched a non-profit initiative called the HBCU Scholarship Fund. The program will grant several $1,000 scholarships to deserving high school graduates and current students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Interested people who would like to contribute to the fund, or who would like to learn more about the program can visit www.HBCU-Central.com.

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tan school grades performing equally with girls. But from the fourth grade on, says Hill. Kunjufu proves there is a “conspiracy against Black hoys," as theirgradesdipdramat R ally and they fall behind girls after not seeing, or interactingwith. many - if any - male teachers. Hill notes that those males pushed out of school ean be translated into the statistic 1 that shows there are more Blaek males in prison than in college. “They graduate to the juvenilejustiee system and when they come out they're not marriageable, thereby tearing the fabric of the Blaek family," he says. And then there is the underground economy of drugs and whatever. “You gotta ask yourself, 'Why are so many bright, single Blaek men standing on street corners and living off the underground?’ One of the main reasons is that teachers who taught them, by their actions, willed them to this fate.” But Dr. Diane Cloud, principal of predominantly Blaek Lau-

rel Klementary School in Bloomfield, Conn., believes Hilfy blame is misguided. "Hill needs to put himself in the shoes of a lady teacher facing.'}() students, live of whom are taller than you are, volatile and foul-mouthed, with one out of that group who challenged his mother at home the previous night." “I had a fourth-grade boy lash out at me verbally, push me and leave the building while in a heightened temper tantrum,” recalls Cloud, a Howard graduate. "I ran after him for a block with my cell phone at the ready, approached him, calmed him down and called his mother tocome pick him up - because I was responsible for that child." Cloud did not suspend the student, rather she urged the mother to keep the child home fora day to calm him. “There are some issues beyond school. The mother may work two jobs and share a modest home with agrandmother and two sisters. The child too often receives no intellectual stimulation at home, and with the turmoil in the

household to survive from day to day, has no time to focus on school," she says. She does agree with Hill on the need for Blaek male teachers. ‘The hoys crave them. A man can talk to them in a way a woman can't. But Blaek men have left the profession in droves because job opportunities outside the field have increased so dramatically for them. Women have filled the void. We need male teachers so badly. I II hire them no matter what their color." Two recent studies lambast school authorities and teachers for clinging to personal biases that single out Black students as perpetrators of disturbances and punish them far beyond the limit or scope of the punishment dictated by a charged minorolTen.se. The Applied Research Center study notes that while AfricanAmerican students comprised 171 percent of the public school |)opulation nationally, their suspension rate is,'J2.7 percent. And while this is wildly disproportionate, so too

is the suspension rate for Blaek hoys compared to Blaek girls. “()ur schools arc suspend ingaiu I locking up school children for mi nor adolescent behavior that used to require a visit to the principal’s office,"says Judith Brown, a senior att« irney for the Washing!* >n, 1 ).C.- , based Advancement Project Says Brown: “It's now turned into a quick way for educational institutions todisposcof Black.students - by deciding early on that they're criminals waiting to happen and then fast-tracking t hem to the jailhouse with thesus|)cnsions." Brown calls for better cliissn >om behavior management training for teachers. “Well-trained teachers can defuse a situation by not becoming overwhelmed by a violent episode," she says. “They know how to deescalate, rathert ban escalatcasituation. "And more Blaek male teachers are the answer, says Hill. “The hoys suffer from the lack of a Blaek male role model in their lives. They ne(*d t(> see someone who looks like them in front of their classroom.”

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