Slavery, racial inequality, and education

Educating Boys in Jamaica: In Search of a New Lens

“…In short, scholars attribute the causes of the current problem of academic underperformance of Jamaican male students to systemic factors that originated in Jamaica's colonial history of racialized slavery systems and structures that led to racial education inequality (Bertocchi, 2015;Bertocchi & Dimico, 2012), the continuation of the policies that originated during Jamaica's colonial subjugation (the Lumb Report), which contributed to institutionalized marginalization of male students (Miller, 1986;Samuda, 1966), gendered socialization, male identity issues, and the feminization of the education system (Chevannes, 1999;Figueroa, 2004Figueroa, , 2010Parry, 1997Parry, , 2000. Other studies point to the role of parenting and poverty (Engle & Black, 2008), and more recent studies indicate that Jamaican males from an early age have a great desire to earn money, preferring a more direct path to earning rather than taking the traditional educational path, which to them is seemly irrelevant (Jamaican Teaching Council, 2013).…”

“…Could it be that both dynamics contribute to the problem, and that, in fact, the institutionalized structures of the colonial past set in motion unconscious societal practices that propagated gender socialization patterns that seem to now be unrelated? Whilst this may be the assertion by Miller (1986Miller ( , 1990, and is suggested in the research on the slavery-education nexus by Bertocchi (2015) and Bertocchi and Dimico (2012), one is left to ponder how pertinent this distinction is in addressing the performance problem with the Jamaican high school male students.…”

“…In some of the countries explored, racial education inequality increased with historical slavery. Put in context, past colonial and racialized slavery systems and structures created economic, social and educational inequities that underlie Black male academic underperformance (Bertocchi, 2015;Bertocchi & Dimico, 2012).…”

“…The gender difference in adolescents' academic pathways established in Jamaica's colonial past influenced the way males and females were socialized and parented over the years, and thus impacted the development of the Jamaican male identity (Bertocchi, 2015;Bertocchi & Dimico, 2012;Chevannes, 1999;Evans, 1999;Figueroa, 2004; Management Systems International (MSI)/ EQUATE, 2005;Miller, 1986;Parry, 1997Parry, , 2000Samuda, 1966). Jamaican scholars have introduced two main theories to explain Jamaican male student underachievement: the marginal theory, and a theory of gender socialization.…”

“…There is a legacy of educational inequities in the U. S. for Black students arising from the country's historical racialized slavery systems (Bertocchi, 2015;Bertocchi, & Dimico, 2012). Both structural and cultural factors influence the educational and life outcomes for Black males, and the current conditions have likely been determined by what has taken place in the past (Howard, 2013;Ladson-Billings, 2006;Noguera, 2003).…”