Why More And More Students “In the Hood” Are Out of Control

Why More And More Students “In the Hood” Are Out of Control

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

During the last year, I have gotten more and more reports from the best teachers I know in Bronx public schools, that their students“are out of control.” We are not talking about Ivy League Teach for America types who grew up in wealthy suburbs, but tough, charismatic, physically imposing women graduates of New York City public schools, with formidable classroom management skills and a great sense of humor.

At first, I found these reports hard to believe. The women I am talking about are not only physically strong, they are incredibly innovative in their pedagogy- the best of the best! If they can’t control a class of Bronx 11 or 14 year olds, who could?

But then I started thinking about their work in a much larger context than one suggested by discussions of curriculum, class management, or graduation rates. And I came up with a startling conclusion- that students living in America’s poor neighborhoods, even by age 10 or 11, already know, intuitively, that the schools they are in are unlikely to get them out of the world of poverty and hardship that surrounds them. As a result, they see what goes on in classrooms--especially all the tests they are bombarded with--as fundamentally irrelevant to their lives!

And they are not wrong in their assessment! If they look around their neighborhoods, they see precious few people who have used education to better their lives. For every person in their hood who gets out by pursuing higher education, there are five who leave by going to prison or joining the armed forces. In their world, there is little real life reinforcement of the message schools preach--that the way to success in America is by passing tests, graduating from high school and going on to college. Those who do manage to jump through all those hoops, when they get to college, find the path is long and treacherous, both economically and academically, and if they do manage to get a college degree often can’t get jobs at all, or can’t get jobs that allow them to pay off their student loans.

The current economic crisis has only made the path of self-denial and academic effort seem more problematical. At a time when even middle class college graduates, from top private colleges, have trouble finding work how are you going to “sell” the proposition that education is the path to success in South Bronx neighborhoods like Morrisania or Hunts Point?

The bottom line is--in a city where the top 1 percent of the population monopolizes 44 percent of the income--you can’t. The deck is already so stacked against young people growing up in poverty that no legerdemain or trickery or classroom magic can convince them that the things they are learning and being tested on will have any positive effect on their lives.

So why shouldn’t they fool around? Why shouldn’t they act out? Why shouldn’t they try to enhance their reputation as a thug, a comedian, or a flirt by making the classroom their private theater? After all, those traits represent real life social capital in the world they inhabit, as opposed to the math problems, history lessons, or sentences they are given to construct.

Some people attribute the phenomenon of poor kids acting out to the stress they are under outside of school--reflected in issues ranging from poor diet, to lack of sleep, to gang violence, to physical abuse in their places of residence. All those are undoubtedly contributing factors. But let’s not discount the “rational” element in student behavior, reflected in their very real understanding that the schools they are in are simply unable to deliver on the promise of a better life they use to “sell” their pedagogy.

Given that cold reality, there is absolutely no reason why a student in a place like the South Bronx should defer the joy and status of being a class comedian or “thug in training” for the prospect of participating in an endless round of test preparation and taking which for people in their neighborhood is truly “A Race To Nowhere.”

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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

'Left of Black': Episode #30 featuring Mark Naison

Left of Black #30 w/ Mark Naison
April 18, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Fordham University Historian and activist Mark Naison in a wide ranging discussion about growing up as a White American embracing Black culture, the emergence of Black Studies on predominately White college campuses, the Bronx African American History Project and his infamous appearance on Chappelle’s Show.

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→Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

'Left of Black': Episode #9 featuring Joan Morgan & Sofia Quintero

Left of Black'--Episode # 9
w/Mark Anthony Neal
Monday, November 15, 2010

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Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the controversy over Tyler Perry’s big screen adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and surviving the Bronx, New York with writers Joan Morgan and Sofia Quintero.

-->Joan Morgan is the author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist and a founding contributor to Vibe Magazine.

-->Sofia Quintero is the author of several novels including Explicit Content, Picture Me Rollin’ and most recently, Efrain’s Secret, her first young adult novel.

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Also available for download from iTunes U Here

New York State of Mind? Alicia Keys and Shawn Carter @ the World Series

Around the Way Gurl

Around the Way Gurl
by Mark Anthony Neal

It started innocent enough; subway platform at the Dekalb Avenue station in Brooklyn, uptown bound BMT train. I was smitten at first sight. I was 16 and she was month or two from 15. We were both from the Bronx, grew up five minutes from each other. It was the spring of 1982 and whatever rhetorical gifts I possess now, they were unknown to me then. After a few days of staring, two of my boys—who both would serve as groomsmen nearly a decade later—urged me to at least ask her name. “Peaches?. what the hell kind of name is that” I recall another friend chiming in. Baby girl of the family, southern roots, the “light one”—as I would come to understand years later. Nevertheless, contact was made, however awkward. Then as in now, she set the agenda, I just followed. But springtime romances are just what they are: fast and fleeting. After a few months we both moved on.

It had been some time since I had seen or thought about her when she called out to me in the Village in the autumn of 1987. We were on Broadway, between 8th Street and Astor Place, right in front of the Benetton that used to be there. I had just graduated from college and she was in her third year at NYU. We exchanged numbers and I didn’t think too much about it, until she called weeks later at the urging of a co-worker. We did the requisite movie date—Barbara Streisand’s Nuts was the film, dinner was at the original "Dallas" BBQ restaurant on 8th street. My lasting memory of the date was her running out of my car when I brought home, though 22 years later, she still denies this.

There were more dates to follow—the Christmas eve date where I locked my keys in my car and had to race across Manhattan by foot to meet her in the basement of Macy’s by David's Cookies, only for my cashless ass (I used my cash pay the locksmith) to take her to dinner to a restaurant that didn’t take credit cards. By every right she should have stepped then, but there was something that kept her interested. I guess I was a good guy.

Within a year we were serious and got engaged on New Year’s Eve 1990 at Chinese Restaurant—now long gone—on 2nd avenue and 32nd Street. We were married in Harlem—on 155th street on the Westside. Her pastor officiated and sang “In the Garden” in a way that our southern parents appreciated more than anything. Still an aspiring poet I read original verse. My best man’s future bride and her singing partner sang Be Be and Ce Cen Winans’ “I’m Lost Without You.” Many remarked about how long I embraced her after we said “I Do.” We took wedding photos in front of Grant’s Tomb and marched into our reception at Columbia University’s International House to “Optimistic” by the Sound of Blackness. Our first dance was to Al Green’s “God Blessed Our Love.” And indeed, 18 years later we have been blessed.

Like any couple we struggle with day-to-day realities. There have been many challenges along the way. Sometimes in the midst of raising two demanding and brilliant little girls, the two of us get lost. Sometimes, she gets lost as my ambitions drive me in every direction, but home. But we always seem to find our grounding. Perhaps it’s the values that we share, two children of the South Bronx, whose working class parents held out in the hope that we would be the very overachievers that we’ve became. Between them, our parents put in more than 90 years of marriage and death was the only thing that stood in their way. There was no question that we were gonna survive.

The only thing I know now is that this woman has made me a better man—and I’ve become a good husband and an even better father. And yeah, I still won’t mop the floor without asking and there’s still that toilet seat thing, but that’s what the next 18 years are for.