Browse

Abstract

Critical boyhood scholars have consistently problematized the moral panic directed at boys’ educational achievements, for instance, by illustrating how the issue is intersected by power hierarchies such class and race, but have not been as attentive to the spatialized dimensions of this discourse. In the Swedish debate, boys in (post)industrial towns in rural regions—affected by decades of deindustrialization—are often pointed out as at risk of becoming unemployed societal liabilities. Documenting the lives, aspirations, and future trajectories of young and rural working-class boys, the television series The School Boys (Skolpojkarna) analyzed in this article reproduces this trope and connects anxieties regarding “redundant” masculinities with rural spaces. Using feminist and post-structural approaches to gender and space, I show how this media production, supplied for educational purposes, mediates normative understandings of young rural masculinity.

Abstract

Studies investigating disadvantaged urban neighborhoods often focus on students’ academic underperformance, ways they succumb to environmental stressors, involvement in illicit activities, and adherence to street-oriented behaviors and culture. This article focuses on the ways a select group of Black boys in the US successfully navigated structural impediments and interpersonal challenges during their secondary school years and eventually matriculated to college. Drawing on interview data, the article examines students’ sense-making and the importance of their peers in navigating the urban environment: (1) interactions with people in the neighborhood and (2) strategies to negotiate the urban environment context in pursuit of their educational aspirations. The students’ narratives highlight the benefits they assign to their peer relationships and collectivist efforts to support their educational goals.

In this article, I explore how the social contract of schooling and the three functions of schooling (Noguera 2003)—to sort, to socialize, and to control— impact and constrain the freedom and agency of a group of young Black and Latinx men in one suburban school district that was experiencing sociodemographic shifts in the Northeastern United States. I use qualitative data to frame how the young men experience schooling, and I show how the local community context facilitates the institutionalization of discriminatory sorting processes and racially prejudiced norms. I also show how the young men are excessively controlled and monitored via zero tolerance disciplinary practices, which effectively constrains their humanity and capacity to freely exist in their school and which inadvertently strengthens the connective tissue between schools and prisons.

Single-sex schooling for boys of color has become popular throughout the United States. Leaders and educators often consider these environments a school-based intervention to address adverse outcomes associated with Black boys. A contributing factor to these outcomes have been negative stereotypes of Black males related to Black masculinity norms, which developmental psychologists contend boys internalize during childhood. Interviews and observations were conducted over 12 months to describe a single-sex boarding program for first-grade African-American boys, affiliated with a coed independent school. Designed to facilitate boys’ positive identity development, the program’s mission and vision, educational philosophy, and schedule/programming will be primarily described from boys’ perspectives. The goal is to explore the merits of this single-sex intervention to ameliorate how Black male stereotypes and masculinity norms contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.

This article explores how a single-sex school for boys of color intentionally and unintentionally (re)defines masculinity through rules and rituals. The school’s mission posits that boys become men through developing three skills: selfregulation, self-awareness, and self-reflection. Drawing from qualitative research data, I examine how disciplinary practices prioritize boys’ ability to control their bodies and image, or “self-regulate.” When boys fail to self-regulate, they enter the punitive system. School staff describe self-regulation as integral to out-of-school success, but these practices may inadvertently reproduce negative labeling and control of black bodies. This article argues for school cultural practices that affirm, rather than deny, the benefits of boyhood.

Latino boys and young men often carry the debt of violence into different spaces. This invisible trauma manifests into disruptive behaviors in schools. It is well documented that violence in urban communities and schools has received significant attention from researchers, but little attention has been paid to Latino male youth as individuals and the various forms of violence they have experienced, and how that impacts educational persistence. This qualitative study focuses on 26 Latino male middle and high school students who are attending two continuation schools to understand the types of violence they have experienced and their educational aspirations after high school.

The concept of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) has been extensively studied over the last few decades, yet few have included the perspective of those whom it has affected—incarcerated adolescent and adult males. Educators and policy makers are limited in determining solutions because they are missing this key perspective. Using a critical race theory framework, we focus on the voices of incarcerated youth and adults who have personally experienced the STPP. Young men within the juvenile and adult justice systems were asked their thoughts on and experiences with the STPP. Responses from 16 participants are shared, along with what they believe would have worked to help them stay out of the system, and their recommendations for how to improve the factors contributing to the STPP

This article focuses on findings from a subgroup of African-American male students as part of a broader qualitative dissertation research study, which explored how exclusion and marginalization in schools impact the lives of African-American students. The study focused on the perspectives of youth attending both middle and high schools in Michigan, and investigated how students who have experienced forms of exclusion in their K–12 schooling viewed their educational experiences. Key themes that emerged from the study were lack of care, lack of belonging, disrupted education, debilitating discipline, and persistence and resilience. These themes were analyzed in relation to their intersectionality with culture, ethnicity, race, class, and gender.

Historical, socially constructed notions of Black and Latino masculinity, mis/labeled behavior, punitive policies (e.g., suspension) and practices (e.g., school-imposed labeling) lead to disproportionate rates of dropout in urban US schools, continued involvement in the criminal legal system, and a limited participation in society. This article argues that school-imposed labeling—affixing a category or descriptor on a student to signal a shorthand message to others about a student’s academic ability and behavior—is symbolically violent (Bourdieu). By examining unofficial labels, punitive structures, and teacher perceptions of labeled students, I explored school-imposed labeling as a form of “normalized” practice that impacts Black and Latino males who attend an urban charter school with a “no excuses” orientation.