Tag Archives
Club 2012: This Is How We Do It
In 2007, a group of Black parents in Loudoun County Maryland became concerned as they watched their middle school sons fall behind in school. These parents’ expectations were high: they were raising their sons in one of the state’s most affluent communities and sending them to the high performing neighborhood schools. These well-educated, well employed […]
Are Black Mothers Failing Their Sons?
Blogger LaShaun Williams, writing for the Madame Noire site, raises the provocative issue of whether Black mothers, who can rely on their personal experiences to raise their daughters but do not have such natural instincts with their sons, are not doing as good a job raising their boys. She suggests Black mothers may be coddling […]
Focus on Facebook = Poorer Grades?
A professor at a Pennsylvania university recently set out to determine how college student’s grades are impacted by their Facebook usage. Today’s New York Times reveals his study’s surprising conclusions, in an article found here. The study found that while spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook is related to negative outcomes, just checking […]
What Do Your Children Know About Our Civil Rights History?
Today’s New York Times features an article, found here, which details how little today’s schools teach about the history of the Civil Rights movement and how little today’s students know about basic civil rights history. Julian Bond, the former civil rights activist who began teaching the history of the civil rights movement twenty years ago, […]
Are We Helping Our Children Learn to Handle Adversity?
Today’s New York Times Magazine includes a very interesting article, found here, about how the heads of a Manhattan private school and a national charter school program are working to help their students develop good character traits as well as good study habits. The private school head feared that his school’s focus on testing at […]
A Persistent Problem: Being Bullied By Our Own for Being Smart
A generation ago, when I was a kid being bused into a predominantly white school in Brooklyn, I faced daily taunting and intimidation on the school bus from other Black students, who accused me of “acting white,” and “thinking I was cute” for the crime of being the only Black kid picked to be in […]
NPR Series: America’s Dropout Crisis
This week National Public Radio is featuring a series called “School”s Out: America’s Dropout Crisis” in which it looks at the dropout crisis through the stories of five people, three of whom have already dropped out and two who are at risk. The series overview can be found here. Today’s broadcast features the story of […]
Say What? Black Men Survive Longer in Prison than on the Outside
A study recently conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina concluded that the death rate was lower for Black men in prison than for those outside it. Take a look at theroot.com’s reporting of this study here. This kind of news gives us another good reason to make sure our sons flourish in […]
NYT “Room For Debate”: Educational Issues
The New York Times online has a series called “Room for Debate”, in which it invites experts in the field to discuss news events and topical issues. Periodically the topic is education. The comments are often interesting and informative, and the format allows you to hear a variety of voices in the nation’s educational debate. […]
The Educational Crisis of Young Men of Color
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, and Gaston Caperton, President of the College Board, have written an essay in today’s Huffington Post and theRoot.com calling for national focus on educating young Black men. You can read it here. Gates and Caperton co-hosted a webcast discussion […]