Thoughts on Ann Ferguson's "Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Masculinity"

I'm deathly ill right now, so please forgive my lack of witty remarks and silly pictures.

Even with my bleary eyes and fuzzy brain, I was able to plug along through what I assume is the introduction chapter to Ferguson's larger work. I've read the article a couple times before,
Ferguson's main objective seemed to be to observe how boys are shaped through "the power of institutions to create, shape, and regulate social identities." (2) Later in the article, you can see Ferguson coming to realize that she had to focus on observing institutional practices and cultural representations to better understand what was going on at the school. The institutional practices observed were the types of punishments that were largely placed against the black boys. The cultural images also go along with how the boys are punished; right at the beginning of the chapter, we hear a staff member say that one of the boys has a jail cell with his name on it.

What struck me most in this article this time around was some of speech patterns used to describe boys and their punishments at the school. The disciplinary room at the school was called the "Punishing Room" or the "Jailhouse." Some of the official terms used to describe the boys in question were "at risk," "unsalvagable," or "bound for jail." Bound for jail?!?! I wrote "WHAT?!" in the margin right next to that passage on page 9. "Unsalvagalbe" is just as bad -- these teachers have given up and are content to place these children in a category.

Ferguson referred to this as part of a "hidden curriculum" which was not only socializing the boys to believe they were bad, but was picked up on by teachers as well. It seemed to me that the language that had been established to describe the boys dehumanized and distanced them even more from their teachers... is there a word for this? I think there might be.

Even though I found Ferguson's article pretty easy to follow along with, I would've liked to hear more about what actually happened to the boys she studied. I read this book called Cultivating Democracy in a class last semester... it didn't directly deal with what the author is talking about here, but it was an exhaustive analysis of of children of different races were tracked in schools to either achieve or fail (in school and in life). It seemed like the author was going in a direction that would suggest that these boys are going to fall straight through the cracks of the school system. I think it would be interesting to hear what Ferguson learned from the boys she interviewed.

Also, this article got me thinking back that movie Tough Guise (I think it might've been mentioned in our class... if not... it goes along well with this reading, so it's worth checking out). It discusses how male masculinity (particularly black male masculinity) has been largely shaped by the media.

I thought about this week's reading in the context of last week's, and I got to thinking about that theme of community-building that Tricia Rose talked about. It made me wonder how the boys might've interacted inside and outside of the Punishing Room and formed a kind of support system -- perhaps they even feel more comfortable in that room now, where their friends are. Ferguson seemed to think that the music the boys listened too was also a uniting factor.

Ok... so hopefully I can drag my sorry self to class tomorrow. I'll see you all then!