An Examination of Motivation Among African American Males of Junior High School Age - Research Paper Example

An Examination of Motivation Among African American Males of Junior High School Age “Learning is the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'” (Smith, 2003) Learning can be considered as a product and also a process. It is the end product of the various experiences we come across in our life. At the same time it is a continuous and never ending process as well. Learning starts at the time of birth and ends at the time of death. It makes the life of a person more meaningful. Learning is the process through which a person acquires knowledge. It is a process in which an individual acquires and develops knowledge, understanding, skills, interests and attitude that are necessary to meet life’s situations. It is not necessary that quality of education is same everywhere. Quality of education depends on how society or government help young students to achieve their educational goals. It is not necessary that all the people may have the same learning or grasping abilities. Learning is a complex process which depends on many factors such as the cultural, intellectual and economical background of the learner. Different people may have different learning styles and learning abilities because of their individual differences. For example, in America, most of the schools may have students from different parts of the world. African Americans are huge in number in America and hence in many of the public and private schools may have a substantial amount of African American students. The learning abilities and the learning styles of American students and the American African students may have huge differences and in many cases, the teacher may faces troubles in teaching a diverse class. Moreover, compared to girls, boys always regarded school as a boring waste of time. America claims that they provide equal learning opportunities for all, however the Black-White achievement gap still exists. This leads to a variety of political, economic, and social ramifications for students. This paper analyses the reasons why and how, middle school aged African American boys in the United States are, by that age, especially unmotivated to do well in school. Middle school aged African American boys in the United States and their poor academic performances Black males are among the most likely students to take least rigorous academic schedule and least likely to take advanced math or advanced science- all predictors of college. Black males begin falling behind in reading math and science during the primary grades. Subsequently, they are disproportionately underrepresented in advanced math, science and foreign language class in middle school (Black male achievement, n. d) The taste of the subjects can affect the learning styles and abilities. African American students are normally dislike difficult subjects like maths and science. Most of them are fun loving characters because of their cultural traits. African Americans are generally not much serious about the educational achievements. They always like shortcuts and it is difficult to achieve better grades in maths and science using shortcuts. The general perception about the difficulty level learning subjects like maths and science are not so good among the African Americans and they usually hate these difficult subjects. African American students normally like the lecture method of teaching rather than the problem solving methods. But difficult subjects like maths and science cannot be taught in the class with the help of lecture method. Lab work and extensive practical work both at home and school are necessary to learn difficult subjects and African Americans are not much interested in doing such difficult tasks in order to learn a subject properly. Pretend you are a 15-year-old African American teenager and you have one of two choices: watch BET (Black Entertainment Television) or do your homework. The typical African American will probably decide to watch television and do homework later, but it never seems to get done, does it? If you have your priorities in order, you will probably do your homework first and watch TV later. Then your homework is complete and you get a chance to watch 106 & Park. Unfortunately, many African American children do not realize that school should be their first priority (Lynch, 2006). Roviere (2010 also expressed similar opinions as that of Lynch. In his opinion, black students are more aware of the cultural stereotypes around them, and “instead of equating success to the sweet reward after a long life of bitter, yet honest hard work, they see a shortcut of getting involved with rap music, sports, or even worse crime” (Roviere, 2010, p.2). In short, the poor perceptions about education among the black students can be attributed to the malfunctioning of their cognitive system up to certain extent. The relationship of learning with meta cognitive system clearly suggests that learning perceptions may have definite role in the learning proces. The meta cognitive system works differently for different students and based on that each student may think differntly about the importance of education. Heridity and environemnt have a direct relationship in shaping the meta cognitive system and it is not possible that the Amerian students and African american students may have the same meta cognitive system because of their genetic differences and differnt environemnts in which they live. “A. W. Boykin theorized that intellectual subjugation stemming from oppression and racism is a major problem in American schools”(Lynch, 2006). Even though racism was prohibited from American society even hundreds of years before, institutional racism is still prevailing in academic institutions in American in different forms. Teachers are not giving enough care to the achievements of the black community and the motivation for learning among the African Americans is less compared to others because of the double standards in schools. Teachers in American schools give more importance to the American culture and undervalue the cultures of others while taking classes. Because of the double standards adopted in the school campus, blacks, especially the black boys consider American education as something important to the Americans alone. In short, African American children do not have much confidence in the American system of education and this belief is more prominent among the boys. Compared to girls, boys take these types of discrimination more seriously and their academic achievements would be seriously affected. In short, cultural gap between the African American and the American is much wider than one would anticipate and hence the perception about American education is different among them. In the United States today, more than 63 percent of African American children come from single parent homes, most of which have the mother as the primary caregiver. Having no positive male role model, the boys in the home are particularly at risk to fail in school and get into trouble (Lynch, 2006) Divorce rate among the black community is more compared to whites and hence most of the black students studying in the schools are come from single parenthood. It is difficult for a father or mother alone to look after the educational needs of their children perfectly when they forced to do everything needed for the family single handily. In most of the divorced black families, the widows are looking after their children. Black females always consider education as less important compared to the black males. Another major reason for the poor performances of the black boys in schools is the low socioeconomic status of the black community compared to the white community. Economically poor people always have a habit of taking the education for their children lightly. It is difficult for the poor people to bear the expenses of school education. Tuitions fees in America are extremely high compared to other countries. Moreover, apart from school education, students need home tuitions for the proper learning of the subjects. All these activities are expensive ones and in normal cases, low income black community may not bother much to spend too much on education. Most of the poor families in America rely failing schools for the educational needs of their children. These schools may not have the adequate infrastructure facilities to provide quality education to the students. Experienced and well trained teachers may not work in failing schools and hence the students studying in these schools may not get quality education. It is no secret that the majority of those incarcerated in the nation’s prisons are primarily young African Americans males. Drug abuse and the commission of crimes are the all-too-frequent outcomes of the inability of young people to overcome the risk factors of single-parent homes, poverty, failing schools, and cultural gaps. As vulnerable young people begin to feel confused and alienated by the world around them, they seek physical and emotional control in the only ways they believe are available to them—through drug use and crime (Lynch, 2006) It is an accepted fact that drug addiction and alcoholism are more among the African American youths than in the American youths. Among African American youths, boys seem to be more vulnerable than the girls as far as drug abuse and alcoholism are concerned. Adolescence is an age in which the children struggle to take rational decisions. Most of their decisions at this period would be motivated by fiction rather than facts. They do not have the ability to segregate between the good and evil. All these adolescent peculiarities may force them to take their education lightly and take shelter in more fascinating things like drug and alcohol. African American teachers are less in American schools and hence most of the teachers do not have the awareness about the exact educational needs of the black children. As mentioned earlier, American teachers always give more attention to the educational needs of the Native Americans rather than that of the African Americans. Because of that the African Americans are not getting enough counselling from the teachers for their educational needs. “Traditionally, African Americans have been labelled as intellectually inferior to other races. This belief has effectively permeated the culture and cognitively debilitated its members. These truths are at the root of anti-intellectualism” (Lynch, 2006). Labelling of African American youths as unintelligent is a major reason fro the under achievements of the black students. Genetically, boys are bothered about such classifications than the girls and hence such labelling may affect the black boys more than the girls. Black boys may think that there is no point in proving their teachers wrong. At the same time some of the black students may take such perceptions as a challenge and will try everything possible to avoid such labelling. Those students may succeed in their efforts and will come out from the schools with flying colours. The underachievers from the black community may keep some career dreams which may not be recognized or taken seriously by the teachers. The expectation about a student certainly affects the learning process. If the student knows that the teacher or the parents expects little from him then he may develop a tendency to neglect his studies. The inferiority complex may develop in such students and he will think that he is not capable of reaching the levels of others and will not take his studies seriously. It is widely accepted that the learning process of a male is different from that of a female. In some particular areas of learning male dominates female and vice versa. For example male children will dominate female in the skills of technical knowledge. Physiological difference in male and female do not lead to difference in skills, attitudes, or interests, but boys show greater muscular strength than girls. Successful experiences serves as a motivational force to consequent performances while unsuccessful ones put a drag on further learning. Readiness or mental set of the learner brings attention in the learning and results in better learning. Social and cultural backgrounds also affect the learning. A child coming from a happy family learns more quickly than one coming from a problematic family. The first one will have peace of mind and can concentrate more on what he is learning. A career as a rapper is not traditionally seen as a legitimate career goal or related to the formal education system. While teachers could use this career goal to spark a student's interest in English class or poetry, students with these types of career goals are often dismissed as having no goals at all. This group of underachievers did not refer to goals such as going to college or any plans past the 12th grade based on meritocracy. This lack of investment in education and the system of meritocracy may decrease a student's desire or motivation to succeed academically (Fisher, 2005, p.8). “There is a self motivated eager learner in every child” (Willis and Hodson, 1999, p.1 &4). Compulsive learning would never help the children to develop a passion towards their learning process. If the students develop difficulty at an early stage of his education in learning certain topics, such difficulties would prolong in his career as a student if compulsive learning implemented. For example, many African American students have difficulty in learning Mathematics and Science. In most of the American schools, teachers adopt compulsive teaching strategies to teach these subjects. Subsequently, the students who are poor in these subjects may develop a harsh feeling towards it. On the other hand, instead of using compulsion, if the teacher was able to simplify the task of learning Mathematics and science, the students may develop passion towards it. In other words, the teacher must adopt differentiation in his teaching considering the diversity of students in the class as far as learning needs is concerned. Unfortunately, in American schools, the process of differentiation seems to be lacking and hence the minority black students are not getting the proper education. “The process of differentiation offering students multiple ways of information, begins with educators examining four areas; content, process, product and environment” (Sprenger, 2008, p.2). Teachers should design their instruction methods to connect with all learning styles, using various combinations of experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation. Any kind of learning depends upon three factors; Nature of the learner, nature of the learning material or task and the nature of the learning situation or method. The conditions influencing nature of the learner are socioeconomic background, culture, age, sex, maturation, readiness, motivation, previous experiences, etc. Moreover, the conditions influencing the learning task are length of the task, gradation of the task, meaningfulness of the task, difficulty of the task etc. But in American schools the teachers adopt only one way of teaching which is suitable only for the needs of the American students rather than the needs of the black students. Conclusions Institutional racism is still prevailing in American schools and it contributes heavily to the underachievement of the African American boys in American schools. Black community is labelled as unintelligent by the dominant white community and hence the black students are not getting enough motivation for their studies. Socioeconomic status of the black students is poor compared to the white students which prevent them from taking their education seriously. Generally, African Americans avoid difficult things in life and they are fun loving people. Because of the different perception about life, difficult subjects like Mathematics and Science would be taken lightly by the black students. Boys are more vulnerable to discriminations and emotions and hence compare to girls, injustices in educational systems or social life affect the black boys more than the black girls. References 1. Black male achievement, (n. d). Retrieved from http://www.pdfchaser.com/Black-Male-Achievement.html 2. Fisher E.J. (2005). Black Student Achievement and the Oppositional Culture Model Journal of Negro Education. The Summer 2005. Online version available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3626/is_200507/ai_n15743650/pg_8/?tag=content;col1 3. Lynch M. (2006).15 Reasons Why Black Students Continue to Underachieve. Retrieved From http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=22758 4. Roviere, J. (2010) Why black students continue to underachieve. Retrieved from http://www.helium.com/items/412638-why-black-students-continue-to-underachieve?page=2 5. Smith M.K (2003). Learning theory, Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm 6. Sprenger M.B. (2008), Differentiation Through Learning Styles and Memory, Publisher: Corwin Press; 2nd edition (April 25, 2008) 7. Willis M.& Hodson V.K. M.A,(1999). Discover Your Child's Learning Style: Children Learn in Unique Ways - Here's the Key to Every Child's Learning Success Publisher: Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House (October 13, 1999) Read More