Do Black males need special schools?

Ebony, March, 1991 by Charles Whitaker

Do Black Males Need Special Schools?

It is a generally accepted, though widely lamented, fact that in most American inner cities, Black males - at every level from kindergarten through 12th grade - are turning off on education in epidemic numbers. In school districts across the country, Black males, in the main, are either failing or are disproportionately labeled as behavior problems, slow learners and truants.

To say that Black males are performing poorly in school is a gross understatement of the current crisis. Recent studies of school districts in Milwaukee, New Orleans and Dade County, Fla., among others, highlight the critical nature of the predicament. In all cities, Black males were shown to have dramatically higher suspension, expulsion, retention and drop-out rates, and dramatically lower grade-point averages.

The Milwaukee study, for example, revealed that more than 80 percent of the 5,716 Black males enrolled at the time in the city's public high schools had less than a "C" average, and that 94 percent of the students expelled from the school system were Black males.

Sociologists, parents and educators agree that a variety of circumstances have led to this dismal state of affairs, including crippling poverty, a drug epidemic, the breakdown of the Black family and the lack of positive male role models in poor Black communities. One unchallenged sentiment is shared by all who review the statistics. Something has to be done to rescue Black males from their dangerous downward spiral.

"When you look at the data, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the system is failing Black boys," says Milwaukee School Board member Joyce Mallory. "Yes, our boys are assertive. They can be mouthy, but they are not uneducable. Yet somewhere along the line we are losing them. And if we don't find ways to get them back, we'll all pay for it in the end."

Among the possible solutions advocated by Mallory and a growing number of educators and parents is a controversial experiment in which Black males are sequestered in educational environments designed exclusively for them. It is an idea gaining support in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, where programs exclusively for Black boys have been instituted in several schools, and in cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, Miami, New York and Philadelphia, where educators are still tinkering with proposals.

Headed by Black male principals and/or teachers who are charged with fashioning Afro-centric curricula that emphasize Black history and culture, these all-Black, all-male programs and classes, their proponents say, are geared toward building self-esteem and self-confidence, and would promote a love of learning, all elements that seem to be missing in the educational experiences of many Black male children.

Are these special programs the answer to the educational crisis threatening Black males, and subsequently, Black America? Their supporters say it is a step in the right direction.

"What we're basically saying is that we need to explore a different, more supportive system for African-American males to learn in, because in the present system they're being destroyed," says Ken Holt, principal of Bell Middle School in Milwaukee. Holt heads a task force that examined the collectively poor academic record of the city's Black male students and is developing curricula for two schools (one elementary school and one middle school) that will focus on African-American men and their accomplishments. The schools, which by law must admit males and females of all races, are scheduled to open in the fall.

Yet, esteemed educators, among them Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose pioneering research into the deleterious effects of segregation on Black children helped sway Supreme Court opinion in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, say projects like the one planned for Milwaukee effectively promote the resegregation of American schools, and countermand the Supreme Court decision in Brown, which struck down separate but equal schools more than 35 years ago.

"I read about these things and I can't believe that we're actually regressing like this," says Clark, 76, who now heads an educational consulting company. "This is contrary to everything that we were fighting against and everything that the research says about the benefits of learning Black and White, male and female together. Even military schools today are coeducational. So why are we talking about segregating and stigmatizing Black males?"

Despite the criticism of Clark and others, experiments in single-sex classes are in full swing at some schools, notably Matthew A. Henson Elementary School in Baltimore, where Principal Leah Hasty has instituted an all-male class guided by Richard Boynton, an imposing yet enthusiastic young teacher.

Hasty, who presented the idea for an all-male class to her staff three years ago, says she was motivated by the hopelessness she saw on the faces of young neighborhood men who stood idly by on street corners day in and day out. "I just wanted to see if I could take a handful of boys at a very young age and make a difference with them," she says. "I wanted to find a positive role model who could say to them, `No, you don't have to be like that,' and make them believe it."