![]() ![]() In most elementary schools, the principals, assistant principals, teachers, and counselors are frequently all female. ![]() Early school experiences provide few, if any, adult male role models for these young boys. Since the majority of such boys do come from single-parent, female-headed households, their most significant role models for the first four or five years of their lives have been their female relatives. However, to the young black male, the early school environment may appear no different from his preschool surroundings. This early exposure to different and new options for imitation and modeling-ones that might not be available in their home environments-may constitute the most crucial element in such girls’ initial academic achievement. And just as important, perhaps, is the fact that many of the instructional strategies used in early-childhood and primary education require children to copy the behavior modeled by the teacher. In addition, inner-city black girls are exposed very early in their academic careers to positive, consistent, literate, black females who offer alternative role models to those encountered in the girls’ non-school environments. Generally, girls enter school more prepared than boys for the activities that characterize early schooling. I believe that current strategies of educational intervention simply start too late in the academic experience of these boys. ![]() By creating all-male classes in kindergarten through 3rd grade, taught by black male teachers, I suggest that many of the negative attitudes toward education developed by inner-city boys in the primary years can be overcome. It is here, I am certain, that urban school systems can begin to make a difference in the lives of young black males. One of the most obvious psychosocial deficits in the environment of inner-city black boys is the lack of consistent, positive, literate, black, male role models. This knowledge may provide us with an approach to the prevention of academic failure in inner-city black boys, specifically, and male students, generally. Sex, race, power, authority, attractiveness, and perceived similarity to self are among the determinants that have been found to be important antecedents to imitative behavior in children. The literature and research in the field of social-learning behavior, specifically that which deals with imitative and modeling behaviors of children, may provide some clues as to why inner-city black girls are generally more successful academically than their male peers.Ī variety of factors appear to determine whether a child will imitate the behavior of an adult model. In attempting to override aspects of the cultural environment in which these boys exist outside the classroom, we must begin to develop new and creative models that are intrinsic to the educative process-models that are aimed at preventing the development of negative attitudes toward academic achievement displayed by many young inner-city boys. The absence of preventative strategies contrasts sharply with the proliferation of remediation models. However, like many attempts at correcting problems in our society, most of these remediation efforts are introduced after students have already failed. Yet, the consequences of this failure are quite evident in the high dropout rate of black males, in the large numbers of young black males who populate our prisons, and, most alarmingly, in the epidemic of homicide among black males in their teens and 20’s.Ī vast array of intervention strategies have been and continue to be tried to bring about scholastic success among this group of youths. However true or false the reasons given for our failure to help this group of children may be, the widespread blame-the-victim mentality does not begin to ameliorate the problem. The most common reasons cited for their academic and social failings are that such boys come from poor, single-parent, female-headed households, that they have no positive male role models, and that they view the educational setting as feminine and not relevant to their daily lives. The myriad reasons given for this situation are also well documented, and appear always to focus on the children or their environment as the cause. ![]() The inability of urban public schools to stem the tide of failure that characterizes the plight of black male children in the inner city is well documented. ![]()
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