Bad Boys by Ann Ferguson

So the basic premise of the article is that African American boys are highly affected by prejudgments made by their teachers. Overall the idea is that a lot of these boys end up in jail because their schools put them there by the way the teachers view them without any prior knowledge, rules in place in the schools, and the way punishments are enforced. These boys are created, and almost manufactured to turn out on the negative side of society. One quote that stood out to enforce that point was when Ferguson said “… as children were tracked into futures as doctors, scientists, engineers, word processors, and fast-food workers, there were also tracks for some children, predominantly African American and male, that led to prison” pg 2.

The schools use of power was a huge factor in this problem. “…School labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined.” I can see how this is possible. My band director had all the faith in the world in me and provided me with all of the tools I needed to succeed. I can see how just as easily a teacher could do just the opposite. We all know teachers make assumptions as to who their students are, and we’ve probably all experienced it either first hand or through others in both favorable and unfavorable ways. If a teacher truly doesn’t like you, they aren’t going to go out of their way to make sure you’re successful. If a teacher is stereotyping and making horrible judgments about their students based on information about their race, like crime, when law enforcement is already racially biased, then what outcome can you really expect?!

I felt like the article was simple to understand, and the way the author began the article made it easy to engage right away and continue reading. As with Rose article from last week, this one had a few wordy issues because of some awkwardly placed vocab, but I found reading through those sentences a few times made them easy to figure out without a dictionary. That was something I didn’t find in the Rose article last week. That reading needed a dictionary, actually, multiple dictionaries, just to get through.

I found this reading easy to relate to the Christensen article when they mentioned the idea of a hidden curriculum (does anyone else feel like they’re stealing when they use the stuff that’s already underlined in the articles???) Christensen spoke about a secret education in the media our children watch, and Ferguson talks about a hidden curriculum that these African American boys are learning about where they fit in society. I thought back to a discussion my class had in FNED about how it’s typically white teachers that are heading these black classrooms, and how is it we expect these kids to learn from someone they feel like they can’t relate to. I just thought that this could also be an important factor as to why some of these kids don’t take their teachers seriously. I know I wouldn’t be able to take someone I couldn’t relate to very seriously. I find it all just a little bit creepy. Overall, the more I read about this stuff, the more brainwashed I feel.

By the way, who else was disturbed by the “Punishing Room?” I envisioned the punishment thing (chokee) that the beastly principal in “Matilda” sent the students to.