THE PROBLEM

5,000 children are expelled from preschool annually. 90 percent are male.

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Only 12 percent of African American boys are proficient in reading.

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More than 70 percent of remedial reading students are male.

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70 percent of all D's and F's are earned by males.

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80 percent of African American students in special education are male.

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66 percent of the students suspended are male.

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53 percent of all African American males drop out of high school.

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Some school districts retain almost 20 percent of their kindergarten students, most of whom are male.

The following is a list of 20 African American third grade males, who took the Iowa Reading Test. This chart shows their performance and that of 20 students chosen at random. Overall, the chart shows how well the students performed over the past five years beginning at the third grade.

While these quantitative statistics are enlightening, I believe the most demoralizing problem is qualitative. When I visit schools and see a Black boy in the corner or sitting in the hall while other students are engaged in the lesson, I take it personally, as if the child were my own son or grandson. Later, if I was to ask him, "How was school today?" and he told me that he spent most of the day in the corner or in the hall, I would immediately schedule a meeting with the teacher. This scenario sheds light on how the spirits of our boys are being broken.

When I visit a school to meet with the principal and see Black male students waiting to meet with the disciplinarian, I look at the sullen, listless, and angry expressions of these sons and grandsons with sadness. I already know how school was today. I see the looks in their eyes. Their spirits have been broken.

How many weeks, days, hours, or minutes have Black boys spent in the corner, outside the classroom door, or in the principal's office? How many opportunities to learn have been missed? How many boys' spirits have been broken?

According to Yale University's first nationwide study of expulsion rates in state-supported preschools, the process begins before kindergarten. According to the researchers, "Preschools are expelling youngsters at three times the rate of public schools. ... boys are being thrown out of preschool 4 1/2 times as frequently as girls. African American preschoolers are twice as likely to be expelled as white or Latino children, and five times as likely as Asian Americans."

Despite this alarming trend, I challenge you to visit a kindergarten class. If you want to see Black boys at their best, look at them in kindergarten. They're eager, they're curious, they're on task. They love learning. Unfortunately, by the ninth grade, they're no longer sitting in the front row. They're no longer on task. They're asleep, bored, and probably are about to drop out. Their spirits have been broken. In the next chapter, we will develop the framework for this book.

FRAMEWORK

In this chapter I will raise the issues that will become more fully developed throughout the book. These issues form the framework, driving force, and foundation of my approach to understanding Black male learning styles and what schools must do to address the learning needs of this neglected population.

· Is there a correlation between the high percentage of White female teachers in public schools and the high percentage of African American males in special education?

· Very few left-brain learners have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Very few visual-print learners have ADD.

· In my opinion and those of others in education and psychology, ADD was invented to justify teachers' expectation of students, including boys, to sit still for long periods of time, work by themselves, and work quietly on boring textbooks and ditto sheets.

· Theoretically we know that students learn differently. We simply do not make the adjustments in our pedagogy, curricula, lesson plans, and classroom management.

· If all children can learn, why aren't they?

· Right-brain students who are taught analytically and sequentially become low achievers.

· Based on patterns of placement if there were only female students, there would be little need for special education.

· If your students are not learning the way you teach, then teach the way they learn.

· How you teach is as important as what you teach.

· If you want to train students, then ask most of the questions — and have predetermined answers. If you want to educate students, however, encourage them to ask questions, and make sure the questions are open-ended.

· Teach the way your students enjoy learning.

· Master teachers do not see broken children nor do they believe in the cultural deficit model. They build on the culture the students bring to the classroom.

· Pedagogy is more than instructional style. It's the mindset teachers have for their students.

· Your students will be as enthusiastic as you are about the lesson plan.

· Ninety percent of K-12 instruction comes from textbooks and ditto sheets.

· If your classroom has more than 30 students and desks that don't move, this could be a problem.

· We could reduce special education placements if physical education was offered on a daily basis.

· Pedagogy in low-income schools has not changed much in the past 100 years.

· From kindergarten to 12th grade, students attend school 13,000 hours, yet they only receive two days of individualized attention.

· Are we preparing students to work in factories that no longer exist?

· Asthma, lead paint, bad diet, and being born addicted to crack cocaine do not produce good students.

· "Underachievers" tend to be right-brain learners. So is the problem the way they learn or the way we teach?

· We should encourage students to ask, "Why do we need to learn this?"

· Learning style is 80 percent biologically driven.

· Boys do not have a short attention span if they are involved in something that interests them.

· Low literacy achievement in primary grades often leads to aggressive behavior in upper grades.

· The writing gap between genders exceeds the racial and income gap.

· Learning styles are not like clothes that can be added or removed. It's who we are.

· Instead of tracking, dividing, or categorizing students by test scores, let's organize students according to their learning styles.

· How can teachers say Black boys cannot learn math or science when they can bounce a ball 30 inches in circumference at 20 miles per hour on a court 94 feet in length and jump 10 feet high from the free throw line, which is 15 feet from the basket, and dunk the ball into a...