Annotated Bibliography 1st draft

Thompson, Gail L. Through Ebony Eyes. San Francisco, California. Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint. 2004. Print.

            Through Ebony Eyes is an in depth analysis of the many factors that play a role in African Americans and Latino’s education. Gail Thompson explains how the traditional ways of both the government and school system has created an environment that makes it difficult for African Americans/Latinos to succeed in school. He also discusses the ways that educators and interest groups have attempted to close the gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Thompson includes in input on where he believes schools and the government went wrong in addressing students of color in a country that it designed to address the majority. Thompson’s argument seems very broad because he doesn’t focus on one issue that affects the academics of people of color in America. It almost seems as if he is attempting to argue his opinion on all of the factors that he has come across in his studies. Through Ebony Eyes is his way to inform educators and anyone who hopes to become an educator on ways to become more effective when teaching the minority here in America.

            Thompson’s argument is broken up into different chapters throughout the book. In each chapter he addresses a different reason for why African Americans struggle academically. The author does a great job of connecting all of different aspects he discusses back to the student, while including how it impacts them academically. In the introduction he claims to discuss the issues that affect minorities academically where in actuality he focuses on African Americans and only include other minorities if they happen to fall into the same boat as African Americans. The book is structured similar to that of a textbook, which shows how the author hopes to truly educate the reader in ways to teach minorities more effectively. He breaks down the different factors into “theories” and backs them up with personal examples as well as hypotheticals.

            From reading the introduction and first chapter I can already tell that this book will be the driving force behind my research because of how well it has been structured. The man thing about this book is that it may connect to other things that I pick up later on in my research. Seeing as the author includes his opinion of a variety of different topics I may be able to find different authors or researchers that may disagree with what he states in this book.

·         “In other words, these students infer that they have to reject their home culture to succeed academically” (pg. 17)- The Acting White Theory

·         “During previous eras black youth were more likely to derive values and identity from family, church, and school…. Today, the influence of these traditional purveyors of Black culture [has] largely diminished. Now media and entertainment are among the major forces transmitting culture to this generation of Black America”. (pg. 20)

“This preoccupation with getting rich quickly stems from at least two sources. The first being is the high unemployment rate in urban communities. In many cases, the education system has failed to prepare young blacks for the workforce or for college” (pg.21)
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Hale, Janice E. Learning While Black. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001 Print.

            Learning While Black is a book about the impact that the community and life outside of school has on African American students that live in an urban environment. Janice Hale explains how politicians and news reporters, who discuss education and its impacts on African Americans, lack experience which makes them less fit for discussing the solution to the problem. She then includes her solutions to the issues that most educators see in African American communities. Hale mentions that if the school is not the center of the program or institution that hopes to reach out to African American students than they will not be able to reach those students who struggle academically. She also talks about the relationship between school and family is essential because students don’t stop learning when they leave school so everyone involved must be on the same page for the student’s sake.

            Throughout the book the author uses personal examples as well as things she has learned throughout her research to strengthen her point. From reading the first chapter the reader can tell that some of the issues she has addressed may seem obvious but when she goes in depth about the importance of each issue, the reader will see an entirely different way at looking at the same issues. That allows the author to include more solutions and explain why educators are the best sources for truly understanding what issues African American students face within an academic environment.

            This reading is not ultra-useful because Janice Hale uses this book to solve the issues that affect African American students. My research is purely to find and analyze the issues that African American students face. However the author explains how her solution will fix the academic struggles that African American students face, which means that she will mention and explain the issues she has come across.

·        “The overwhelming majority of African American children come from single-parent households. African Americans work longer hours often for less money than whites earn (Toppo 2000); often they are minimally educated and have substantial constraints on their time.” (pg. 8)

·        “Parents whisper among themselves, expressing their frustration with this situation, but is never brought into the dialogue on school reform” (pg. 9)

·        “At this writing the state of Michigan spends $35,000 a year to incarcerate one African American male. For maximum-security incarceration, the cost to state is about 65,000 a year, and to the federal state about $75,000. Compare those costs with $8,000 it cost to enroll an African American male child in a two-year Head Start program.” (pg. 38)

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 Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan. Black Students and School Failures.New York. Greenwood Press. 1990.

            Black Students and School Failures is a book about the different connection between African American students performance in school, and their personal lives. The Author Jacqueline Irvine connects every aspect of an African American, who grew up in an urban environment to how well they do on a national scale. She also discusses how the mindset of these students change throughout their school experience and all of the driving factors that lead them to a horrible conclusion. This book also includes a lot of stats that relate African Americans to whites in different categories such as: standardize testing, graduation rates, poverty, and teen pregnancy.

            Irvine does a great job of explaining what schools in poor communities lack and how a failed school system creates poorly educated students. She then connects that with the added impression that students get from their environment. This book breaks down the aspects of educating a student both from the academic point as well as the cultural point of view. The level of analysis that the author shows throughout her book prove that she has not only looked at this issue from a numbers stance but a psychological stance as well. It is as if she has stepped in to the shoes of the student, teacher, and researcher.

            I can use this book in multiple ways. For one I can use this information to strengthen things that I have learned in other parts of my research. Also my main topic may be altered because I am learning about the issues that cause African Americans to struggle in school; however this book may lead me to focus on a more specific area. The author provides detailed examples of how each issue can cause a snowball effect of failure or misfortune in a student’s life. That will allow me to use the book in multiple ways depending on where I go with my research.   

·         “There is a strong relationship between black student achievement, teen parenthood, and poverty. Poor black students usually score lower on standardize measure of achievement and are overrepresented in the ranks of dropouts and pregnant girls.” (pg. xiv)

·         “The hidden curriculum is the unstated but influential knowledge, attitude, norms, rules, rituals, values, and beliefs that are transmitted to students through structure policies, processes, formal content, and social relationships of school”. (pg. 5)

·         “One factor related to the nonachievement of black students is the disproportionate use of severe disciplinary practices, which leads to black students exclusion from classes, their perception of mistreatment, and feelings of alienated and rejection, which result ultimately in their misbehaving more and/or leaving school”. (pg. 16)