Bad Boys

1. In her book entitled “Bad Boys”, Ann Arnett Ferguson sheds light on the fact that school conditions and atmosphere’s have a profound impact on the outcome of children, especially the young African American males. Ann Ferguson performed a three year study in Rosa Parks Elementary School to try to find connections between how boys acted and were treated in school, to where they would end up later on in life. She stated, “In the course of my study it became clear that school labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined” (Ferguson, page 2).

These children faced many challenges that had profound effects on their learning, identity formation, and labels as “bad boys/girls.” One example that can affect social class is the school attended and the neighborhood. Rosa Parks’ students came from homes of different race, household types, and annual incomes. The school itself is very neat, up-to-date, and has a calm atmosphere. The neighborhood in which it resides is also neat. Yet Rosa Parks is located in the heart of a major drug-trafficking area in the city (Ferguson, page 6). It is an urban-poor neighborhood. Ann found that all of the boys in the study lived in the neighborhood around the school. “Of the Troublemakers, two were living in families with both parents, four lived in mother-headed households, one was being raised by his father, two were in foster families, and one lived with his sister” (Ferguson, page 10).

Another example of a challenge that can be attributed to the children’s social class is punishment in the schooling system. In the Punishing Room at Rosa Parks, the children there were predominantly black who had been “labeled ‘at risk’ of failing, ‘unsalvageable,’ or ‘bound for jail’ by school personnel” (Ferguson, page 9). School rules sorted and ranked students. The rules governed students...