Answer:
Explanation:
Young Gifted and Black is a collection of five essays written by three authors that focus on identifying the unique challenges African-American face in institutionalized racism embedded in our schools, what it means when they commit themselves to high achievement and how schools can change their programs to create culturally responsive classes that support all children. Perry uses various narratives to combat the common misconception concerning African-American students and presents theories of group achievement with descriptions and analysis. Steele presents a couple experiments that he and his team designed and preformed to assess the issue of stereotype threat on the testing performance of students. Unlike most written presentations of psychological research it uses an informal voice that makes the information easily comprehensible.
The first two sections regarding pre- and post-Civil Rights black education and the relationship between stereotype threat and achievement were pretty informative and well-argued. The last section made me question the author’s argument that raising achievement is as simple as he states. If I read another essay/article/book where the author recommends further overworking underpaid teachers and suggests that they all be content specialists in their field as the solution to bridging the gap between low performance and excellence, my eyes are going to roll so much they fall out.
Theresa Perry brilliantly approached the topics of “literacy for freedom, and freedom for literacy” during slavery, and the contextual and cultural impact of perceived Black intellectual inferiority among society. I particularly enjoyed her discussion on slaves learning to read, and how that dynamic of yearning to achieve (via reading) has been lost.
