Black Students and School Failure: Policies, Practices, and Prescriptions [Paperback]

Jacqueline J. Irvine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0275940942 | ISBN-13: 978-0275940942

Research findings by the National Commission on Excellence, the Children's Defense Fund, and the College Board, among others, suggest that much work remains to be done to upgrade the educational experience and performance of the fastest growing segment of the American school population, blacks and other minorities. This country's survival and strength will ultimately depend on the quality of education given to this important group that has been systematically and effectively excluded from the benefits of educational opportunity. Without these benefits, blacks and other minorities will never achieve economic independence, and the self-perpetuating cycle of poor school achievement, poverty, and teen parenthood will grind on relentlessly. This important study addresses the many facets of this complex problem by explicating its many roots, assessing strengths and weaknesses inherent in the present system, and proposing strategies for dynamic changes. Chapter 1 reviews various societal prescriptions regarding education and descriptive practices harmful to black students and uncovers a "hidden" curriculum. The focus of Chapter 2 is on cultural synchronization in style, language, and cognition and on how disappearing black educators increase the lack of synchronization. Chapters 3 and 4 detail the effects of teacher expectations in various contexts including grade level, subject, and time of year, and present a thorough research study of teacher-student interactions. The last two chapters outline strategies for change and implications for training and staff development exploring Afro-centric responses, parent involvement, relevant research findings, and various staff development competencies for policy development and prejudice reduction. The detailed introductory essay, the seven tables and five figures, and an appendix that provides supplemental information describing the research study methodology in Chapter 4 complete this valuable volume. Scholars and students of Afro-American and African Studies, as well as educational administrators and practitioners will find this work both timely and provocative.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Expanding upon the important message of the US Department of Education's report, A Nation at Risk (1983), Irvine defines and illustrates the severity of the problem of black student achievement. Irvine claims that black children are subject to school failure because of their culture, race, and social class. She points out that not all black children are equally at risk, as consideration must be given to regional, class, and gender variations. However, race alone seems to be a salient factor that contributes to unequal school treatment, participation, and distribution of rewards for all black students. Irvine describes the causes of the problem through the use of a process model based on the theories of cultural synchronization and teacher expectations that explain factors that contribute or inhibit the school achievement of black students. The author suggests interventions (such as Afrocentric independent schools, effective teaching, and parent education) for educators of at-risk black students, and describes competencies that can be developed in teacher training and staff development programs. Admitting that there are no quick and simple solutions, no single program or packaged interventions, no one way to teach black children, Irvine suggests that the US needs to develop a long-range, visionary national policy, and that committed, caring, dedicated, well-trained teachers are needed who are supportive, biculturally trained, and not afraid, resentful, or hostile to black children. Excellent references. Highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty in teacher training and related areas, and practicing school personnel.”–Choice

About the Author

JACQUELINE JORDAN IRVINE is Associate Professor in the Division of Educational Studies at Emory University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Praeger (April 30, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275940942
• ISBN-13: 978-0275940942
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,466,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Work on the Education of Black Children, April 20, 2003

By 

"patrick_r_harper" (Coconut Creek, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Students and School Failure: Policies, Practices, and Prescriptions (Paperback)

I highly recommend Black Students and School Failure (BSASF) to all serious educators and parents of black students. I also highly recommend re-reading it to anyone who has read this book some time ago. Simply put, this book makes the reader think.

I first read BSASF in 1991. Over the years, I have re-read sections of the book a number of times. For me, the vital and brilliantly communicated points of BSASF are these:

1. [Contrary to "Bell Curve" thinking,]Black children's capacity and potential for learning is equal to that of other ethnic groups.

2. Black children's learning potential is systematically not being realized in America's school systems. Reasons or this include but are not limited to: low expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies; lack of cultural synchronization; lack of national, strategic focus on effectively educating poor, minority children.

In other words, black student failure in school does not point to an inherent inability to learn. Rather, it points to clearly ineffective - perhaps even racist - policies and practices on a classroom, school, school system, and national level.

3. The problem of black student school failure is significantly correlated with the problem of black poverty - and the salient issues of drug abuse, violence, teen pregnancy, etc. These problems persist and will continue to persist until there is an active commitment address them with not just short-lived interventions, but long-term strategic focus on improving educational outcomes for black students.

Being a first-year teacher of math at a 90+% black high school in South Florida, I am an everyday witness of low teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies for black students. This book convinces me that there would be significantly less black poverty if significantly more teachers had high expectations for their black students. Moreover, it makes me wonder if perhaps there would even be a cure for cancer!

Patrick Harper

Coconut Creek, Florida
April 20, 2003

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why blacks need their own black schools. IMPORTANT BOOK, February 3, 2002

By 

"dialo" (South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Students and School Failure: Policies, Practices, and Prescriptions (Paperback)

That book is difficult, but I made my way through it, because it’s the truth. And it is good stuff. And it’s worth it. She tells the truth. She explains why black children and students have such problems with Western education. Her answer is that Western education was designed and made by whites. This may be OK for Asians, who are closer to whites, but it can’t work for Africans, our race is too different, the “racial distance”(and the culture that stems from each race) is too big. I don’t mean to be racist, man, but that’s how it is, we are no whites, and whites are no blacks, and that’s fine. Seems to come close to a book I haven’t read, The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power. AND, even worst, she proves, reveals that the aim of this white education that is imposed unto blacks is enslave them by conditioning them to respect white authority, to be docile, subordinate and dependent on white, and by predestinating them to the inferior lowest jobs whites need for their free-market economy. Put it clearly, man : it is still white slavery and exploitation of Africans, but it is hidden. And worst, because you don’t see it and you won’t revolt and shake off the white yoke. It’s deception. And I would had that this white schooling hurts terribly, breaks our African soul, identity , and that’s why many of us fail, our African soul can’t work out with a white identity that is unnatural to us and that enslaves us. But she has the (obvious) solution: we need our own separate schools, but not just so before the segregation, not compulsory, and above all not designed by whites for white children, but designed by Africans for black children. That’s it. The whole point is about designing black school. It should be done by Africans who have rediscovered their roots, I mean their own African cultures, religions, races and languages. Here in South Africa we got a seminal book, P. C. Luthuli’s The Philosophical foundations of Black education in South Africa. Luthuli saw that “While throughout their history Black people have borrowed quite generously in order to construct their school curriculum, the time has come for this to be done within the dictates of their basic needs” and that our schools “must be governed by the fundamental collective philosophy of life”, that is by our own African soul, not the thinking, the soul of the white race, which is alien to us. Irvine, working with the African diaspora in America has come exactly to the same conclusion. What a good book, man, that’s real black studies, black university, and it’s not baloney like some of those white racists say who would like to abolish black studies. Quite the contrary, read her book, she proves we need our own “Afrocentric independent schools”.