Talkin Points #5 "Don't Believe the Hype"-Ann Ferguson

Some things I understand-I believe that Ferguson is saying that African American males in school are labeled as not being able to achieve or reach any type of success. She says, " In the course of my study it became clear that school labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as a part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolat black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined."(page 2) She explains the study she is doing on this at Rosa Parks Elementary School as, "This study investigates punishment through an exploration of the meaning of school rules and the interpretation of trouble from the youth's perspective. "(page 2) From doing her fieldwork at the school she found that, "Through a combination of participant observation at the school and a wide range of interviews and conversations with kids and adults, i examines the beliefs, the social relationships,and the everyday practices that give rise to a pattern in which the kids who are sent to jailhouses and dungeons in school systems across the United States are disproportionately black and male." (page 7) She also finds that the staff at the school does not take concer that the majority of students that are failing or at risk of falling are mostly black and male. She also did interviews with ten students she calls schoolboys that are doing well and ten that she called troublemakers that are getting into trouble. She came to understand the students and what they were going through and one of the students in particular, Horace helped her witht that. She says, "With his help I came to see kids not as humans-in-the-making but as resourceful social actors who took an active role in shaping their daily experiences." (Page 15) When she listened to the music that the boys listened to she, "...Discovered a potent alternative site of knowledge for youth about bodies and beauty, sexuality, gender relationships, racial identification, authority, justice and injustice, loyalty and friendship, style and address, transmitted through a vehicle that simultaneously engaged pleasure and fantasy." (page 6) Her study shows how, "Institutional norms and procedures in the field of education are used to maintain a racial order and how images and racial myths frame how we see ourselves and others in a racial hierarchy." (page 19)
Some things I don't understand- There were a few vocabulary words that I had difficulty with: deleterious, ribald, misogynist, hegemonic, inveterate truants. Also there was a quote on page 20 that I had some difficulty understanding, " The racialization of cultural forms and practices not only extracts behaviors and attitudes from the social matrix in which they are embedded, but tranforms them into immutable racially linked characteristics that produce poverty and bad citizens."
Connections to other texts or course themes- This reading relates to Thomas Hine's "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" in the fact that both black males and teenagers are stereotyped to be a certain way and society expects certain things of them that not all of them may do. Society expects black males to be a certain way and expects them to fail, just like socity expects teenagers to be irresponisble and careless.
Questions/Comments/Points to Share in Class: One question I have is why are the educators in this piece not doing something to help these students succeed and do better and break through the stereotypes and expectations that are placed on them?