The Trouble with Black Boys: Chapters 2 and 3

I have to say that Noguera's book is my favorite of the readings we have done for this course.  I find that his style of writing, providing statistics while also incorporating narratives, makes it very easy and enjoyable to read.  I especially enjoyed this week's readings, because chapter 2 focused on the struggles for Black males in education while chapter 3 focused on the struggles for Latinos in education.  Of course, both of these struggle are part of a bigger cultural problem, which Noguera also acknowledges. 

In chapter 2, "The Trouble with Black Boys", Noguera tries to make sense of the statistics that identify the struggles of Black males in American society.  He discusses that Black males lead the nation in homicides, as both victims and perpetrators, and are now leading the nation in suicides as well.  Black men are at the top of the charts for arrests, convictions, and incarceration.  Black males have the highest probability of dying in the first year of life, and are the only group whose life expectancy is decreasing (17).  All of these statistics are alarming, but of course Noguera chooses to focus on the fact that Black males are more likely than any other group to be suspended and expelled from school and that college enrollment for Black males is declining.  Noguera proposes several possible reasons behind these educational struggles facing Black males.  Noguera states that one out of every 3 Black children is raised in poverty (21).  He goes on to discuss the other challenges faced by children raised in poverty: single-parent household, low birth weight, low educational attainment of parents, limited access to healthcare, and other challenges are more common among children raised in poverty.  Of course, these are not the only challenges facing Black males in school.  Noguera goes on to put some of the blame on the schools as well, given that Black males are more likely to be labeled as having a behavior problem or to be less intelligent even at a young age.  They are also more likely to face severe punishment for breaking school rules, even for minor offenses (22).  He also attributes some of the problems to the behavior of individual students, acknowledging that Black males often adopt behaviors that make them complicit in their own failure, such as acting out in the classroom and avoiding challenging themselves academically (22).  Noguera also recognizes the self-defeating mindset that exists in some Black communities: that Blacks will never be as successful as whites, no matter how hard they work.  Some also feel that music and sports are the only ways out of poverty, rather than focusing on academic pursuits (23).  

As I read for this course, I am always trying to think of the students I have taught and how they relate to the statistics or narratives that I read.  Unfortunately, I have taught only a small number of Black students in my 10 years of teaching in suburban Chicago.  That said, I have only really had one student who may have reflected some of the challenges I read about in Noguera: Sean was raised by a single mother, raised in poverty, and did not value school or education very much.  He was an extremely talented football player and told me his sophomore year that he was going to go to the University of Michigan.  Unfortunately, that did not happen, possibly because of his lack of academic focus in high school, and he ended up earning a scholarship to play football at Northern Illinois University.  He also dreamed of playing in the NFL, but that dream has still not panned out for him, sadly.  This is where Noguera's words make so much sense: Sean viewed football as his road to success rather than academic pursuits (although I'm sure he was capable of being a good student), and now he is in a holding pattern in his life as he has tried to play for a couple of NFL teams and been cut.  Having focused on a passion outside of football in college, he could have had an education to allow him to find a career to make a life.  The other Black students I have had have been more like the typical students that I see in my classes: motivated, bright students, focused on college and their future.  They all played sports or danced and were passionate about them, but I think that they recognized that these were passions that would probably not have a big place in their lives after high school.  

Chapter 3, "And What Will Become of Children Like Miguel Fernández?", was one that I was able to connect with more based on the population of the school that I teach at.  Noguera began the chapter by stating that Latinos have the highest dropout rates and the lowest college attendance rates, and continued to cite some of the same struggles that face Black males: overrepresentation in special ed and remedial programs, underrepresentation in honors and AP courses (43).  I then really enjoyed the narrative that Noguera shared about Miguel, like the narrative about his own son that he shared in Chapter 1.  Noguera described Miguel's situation and it was one that is very similar to that of the Latino students at my school; a number of Latino students work long hours to help support their families (in contrast to the rest of the students who just work for spending money to buy Lululemon clothes or Lollapalooza tickets).  The struggle of Miguel's future is another one we see frequently in our Latino students: many of them are undocumented immigrants, making their college prospects much more challenging.  Our students are fortunate in ways that Miguel is not, though, because the Latino students at my school are a very small percentage and we have a number of services for them.  My school has two guidance counselors who speak Spanish, there is a Spanish-language liaison who also acts as an advocate for the Latino students at school, and we have a special program of Spanish for Heritage Learners in which they are in classes with other Latinos and can focus on their cultures and improving their language of heritage.  Students like Miguel face so many more challenges at overcrowded, inner-city schools where there are so many Latino students and they likely do not get the same services and opportunities that the students at my suburban public school get.  

I think that the part that I found most interesting of these two chapters was where Noguera distinguished between recently immigrated Latinos and those who are second- or third- generation in the U.S.  Noguera states that the second- and third-generation Latinos are "children of the present - children who are so consumed with surviving, with getting by, with learning how to make it from day to day that they make no plans for the future and often have trouble contemplating life past eighteen" (50).  These comments, which contrast second- and third- generation Latinos from the hard-working, idealist Latinos recently arrived in this country, reflect what we see at the high school I teach at.  The Latinos whose parents or grandparents immigrated here often speak little Spanish, or understand it but refuse to speak it themselves.  They don't value education, and many of them suffer from discipline problems due to poor decision-making: they cut class, they steal from the cafeteria, they get into fights.  The Latinos in the ELL program are very different.  Some of them come from rural areas of Mexico where they did not have the opportunity to go to school, so even though they arrive at 17 or 18 and legally do not have to attend school, they do attend and work very hard to succeed, even working with teachers during their lunches to succeed on state tests in the spring.  I look forward to continue reading Noguera's book to see if he has suggestions for how to help these other students succeed in school.  I hold the belief that all students are able to succeed, and I would like to see all of the schools in this country do a better job at helping ALL of our students reach academic success.