Black Masculinities and Schooling: How Black Boys Survive Modern Schooling

250 Pages·1997·1.012 MB·English

by  Tony Sewell

BLACK MASCULINITIES
AND SCHOOLING

BLACK MASCULINITIES
AND SCHOOLING
How Black boys survive
modern schooling
Tony Sewell

Trentham Books
iv• BLACKMASCULINITIESANDSCHOOLING
First published in 1997 by Trentham Books Limited
Trentham Books Limited
Westview House
734 London Road
Oakhill
Stoke on Trent
Staffordshire
England ST4 5NP
© Tony Sewell 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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for the Copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any
part of this publication should be addressed in the first
instance to the publisher.
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978 1 85856 701 3
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many people for their support, encouragement and
advice: I would like to thank Morwenna Griffiths for her guidance
and wisdom and all the staff and pupils at Township school. A
special note of thanks goes to Adele Williams who showed the
utmost care and patience. Thanks also to Gillian Klein and the
staff at Trentham Books.
To Zindzi and all the boys at Township
Contents
Introduction ix
Chapter 1
Raising the issues: The case of John Caxton School 1
Chapter 2
Teacher attitudes: Who’s afraid of the big Black boy? 25
Chapter 3
A range of student responses: Conformists and Rebels 75
Chapter 4
Conformists:A cultural sacrifice 79
Chapter 5
Innovatorsand Retreatists 101
Learning to balance the books
Chapter 6
Rebels: It’s all or nothing 115
Chapter 7
How Britain became ‘Negro’ – 139
Black masculinities go national
Chapter 8
The case of two masculinities 173
Chapter 9
TowardsSolutions: 187
practical strategies for teachers and students
References 221
Index 229
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List of Tables
Table 1: Examination Results 29
Table 2: Ethnicity Distribution in School 69
Table 3: Ethnicity/Exclusions for Township School 70
Table 4: Ethnicity Distribution in Year 4 71
Table 5: Ethnicity/Absence/Exclusions Year 4 School 72
Table 6: Holborn Reading Ages on Entry 73
Table 7: After-school Destinations (Fifth Year Only) 74
Table 8: Factors Influencing Racial Identity 200
Table 9: Factors Influencing Black Communications 201
Introduction
Black boys are Angels and Devils in British (and American) schools.
They are heroes of a street fashion culture that dominates most of our
inner cities. On the other hand they experience a disproportionate
amount of punishment in our schools compared to all other ethnic
groupings. This book seeks to explain why this has happened. This
experience of being the darling of popular youth sub-culture and the
sinner in the classroom has led to the formation of a range of
behaviours. How do African-Caribbean boys in particular respond in a
school that sees them as sexy and as sexually threatening? These
responses are what I call masculinities. They are linked to how the boys
perceive themselves as males and how others perceive them.
At the heart of the book is a thesis which asserts that teachers in
primary and secondary schools cannot escape the wider perceptions
that exist about Black boys. Indeed many of their actions in my
research show a belief in the myth that African-Caribbean boys present
a more serious threat to society.
This work is not a naive defence of the ‘essential innocence’ of Black
people. It acknowledges the positive and negative force of peer group
culture in the schooling of these children.
What drives my thesis is the evidence of how representations of Black
masculinity have made African-Caribbean boys in Britain too ‘sexy’
for school. I use the word ‘sexy’ as a positive and negative force.
Negative in its narrow perspective wh ich sees Black males only in the
context of sport, music and crime. Positive in their talent as makers of
positive identity for both Black youth and White. In too many cases
African-Caribbean boys were burdened with a representation that they
all had to carry. It was centred on the ‘body’ and not on the mind. The
most important factor was how it became anti-school.
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The book therefore presupposes that school cannot be understood in
isolation; both teachers and pupils come to the institution with wider
perspectives acquired outside the classroom. It is the perspectives on
Black masculinity that I want to explore. What are the teacher
perspectives and how does this determine their actions in school? What
are the messages coming from the popular Black culture that exists
outside of school and how does this inform the peer and individual
perspectives of African-Caribbean boys in school?
For the researcher looking at the complex interactions between teacher
and Black male pupil, a surface reading will often hide a more
problematic understanding of these relations. This potent mixture of
race and sex cannot be explained by simplistic notions of teacher
racism. What has been overlooked in too many studies is the complex
interplay of racism, sub-cultural perspectives and schooling. It is an
acknowledgement that in the field of ‘real’ schools life is very messy.
As Rizvi puts it:
Racism is an ideology which is continually changing, being
challenged, interrupted and reconstructed, and which often appears
in contradictory forms. As such, its reproduction in schools, and
elsewhere, can be expected to be complex, multifaceted and
historically specific. (Rizvi, 1993a p15)
Traditionally the discussion of gender and education has centred
around girls. In the late eighties with the explosion of men’s studies
(e.g. Askew and Ross 1988; Heward 1988; Connell 1989 and Skeggs
1991) there was a growing interest in the links between masculinity
and schooling. This was given added weight by government concern
over the apparent academic gap between boys and girls.
When it comes to African-Caribbean boys however, the evidence for a
conflict with schooling goes back to the early 1970s. Writers like
Coard (1971) showed how Special schools had been systematically

used as a dumping ground for Black children (mainly boys) who did
not conform to schooling. The Swann Report (1985) also failed to
address the particular issue of the experiences of Black boys in school
and ended up talking about cultural deficits. The national interest in
this area seems prominent only in the search for causes of juvenile
crime. This was evident in police and media interest: