Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Ever so simply several million African-American males fall victim to epistemological violence.

Last month, the Schott Foundation for Public Education, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published “The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males and Public Education,” and concluded the following: the national 2007-2008 graduation rate for black males was 47 percent; half of our states have graduation rates for black males below the national average of 47 percent; yearly, more than 100,000 black males do not graduate from high school in New York City alone; based on findings from 48 states, black males are the least likely to graduate from high school in 33 states, while black and Latino males are tied for the least likely to graduate in 4 states; by themselves, Latino males are the least likely to graduate in an additional 4 states; in California, 54 percent of black males graduate from high school compared to 78 percent of white males who graduate; 78 percent is also the national graduation rate for white males--31 percent higher than that for black

males. 

Regardless of who is responsible for this outrageous failure--the parents, the schools, the teachers in the schools, the boys themselves--the assault on these boys’ future is real.  It is not something that goes away with the next commercial.  It is not something that only happens between commercials.  It is not something that the “cut” or “delete” buttons on our computers neatly remove.  The shooting will not stop when the 2010 calendar dissolves into that for 2011.  And the fire will not cease when the next Democrat or Republican sits in the Oval Office.

And yet this violence on the mind, or at least its cause, is no mystery.  Its origins do not lie hidden beneath the bowels of the earth, nor are they out of sight at the nether regions of the universe.  The cause or contributing factors have already been transparently formulated: the acceptance that whites are hierarchically dominant; the endorsement that blacks are not as smart or attractive as whites; the belief that whites express themselves better than blacks; the presumption that blacks should assimilate to the white world; the  embracing of exaggerated bravado or hyper-masculinity; the assumption that teachers have negative perception of black males; the exhibition of aggressiveness during interpersonal problem solving.

Believe it or not, the aforementioned are personal traits found among young African-American men who have dropped out of high school, according to Howard C. Stevenson, Margaret B. Spencer, and Jerry Johnson in “The Mental Health of African American Males in Independent Schools.” (See http://jcm9232.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/the-mental-health-of-african-american-males-in-independent-schools.)  

Though this writer feigns no expertise, it seems only logical that the problem of black males dropping out of school might be tackled head-on by confronting these issues of negative self-perception and the inability to “switch codes” or to negotiate a secure identity in predominately white environments--or in the presence of white authority.

Since 1919, public relations counselors (beginning with Edward Bernays) and, later on, so-called “depth men” or ad men (mad men, too) have been overtly manipulating Americans to buy a host of commodities, most of which are extraneous to the basic needs of human survival.

Today, these advertising and marketing gurus still exploit subconscious human drives, such as emotional security, self-worth, gregariousness, ego-gratification, maternity, creativity, competitiveness, a sense of roots, a sense of power, and immortality itself, in order to sell a vast array of corporate products and services.

It should come as an embarrassment to educators of all stripes, colors, banners, and degrees that advertising has successfully shaped the desires and purchasing habits of tens of millions of Americans (including children), yet the public schoolmasters and the intelligentsia are failing to motivate and persuade the masses of American students to achieve proficiency in math, reading, and science.

And the question of proficiency transcends ethnicity and class, given that, in 2006, the United States as a whole ranked 25th of 30 nations in math and 24th of 30 in science, as reported by McKinsey & Company in "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools."  (See http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/images/page_images/offices/socialsector/

pdf/achievement_gap_report.pdf.)

In “Too Long Ignored,” a New York Times Op-Ed column from August 20, 2010, Bob Herbert referred to the current crisis facing black boys as “a job that will require a campaign on the scale of the civil rights movement.”  He is undoubtedly right.  And though he does not posit a specific program of action, individuals in the black community, which Herbert claims will have to initiate such a movement, would be smart to begin by figuring out a way to reverse those seven disturbing tendencies found among African-American high school dropouts.

The most logical and direct solution entails a comprehensive curriculum and a somewhat erudite encyclopedia--why not return to books, if books are the tough lesson that must be learned?--whose first volume is, of course, an abecedarian.

And at the age when the mind is perhaps most fertile, when the gates to the subconscious are less well-guarded, then begins the sowing of seeds for the reversal of those negative characteristics found among black high school dropouts.  The method is propaideutic, consisting of various forms of inculcating skills and creatively imparting messages of positive self-perception, a fine-tuned ethics of understanding color, and enough cultural capital--regardless of the “culture”--to pursue one’s version of liberty, prosperity, or paradise of spirit.

Abecedarians and basal readers would introduce semiotics through appropriately fascinating stories with deliberate lessons, and one of the lessons is always about intellectual maturation, if not bibliophilia.

Semiotics would also pervade the colors, which, besides the pictures and the words themselves, would stimulate the formation of mental habits pertaining to the relationships between icon, index, and symbol, types of signs in the semiotics of the American pragmaticist and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914).  Assuredly, aspects of language like simple anagrams (letters rearranged to form different words) and neologisms (newly-coined words) comprise an element in diction, which itself is one of the six component parts of Aristotelian tragedy, a form of imitation that itself teaches character (a second component of Aristotelian tragedy).

Aristotle is primarily mentioned here to invoke poetics, which is imitation or the art of producing likenesses in rhythmical language, the better with which to teach youth something valuable, if not actually “truth.”