Education by Any Means Necessary: Peoples of African Descent and Community-Based Pedagogical Spaces

Abstract

This study examines how and why peoples of African descent access and utilize community-based pedagogical spaces that exist outside schools. Employing a theoretical framework that fuses historical methodology and border-crossing theory, the researchers review existing scholarship and primary documents to present an historical examination of how peoples of African descent have fought for and redefined education in nonschool educative venues. These findings inform the authors’ analysis of results from an oral history project they conducted into how Black Bermudian men utilized learning spaces outside schools, such as the family, Black church, and athletics clubs, to augment their personal and scholastic development. Based on their historical and empirical research findings, the authors argue that educational actors (including teachers, administrators, policy makers, and researchers) focused on school-based issues like the academic achievement gap would do well to recognize the impact learning spaces outside of schools may have on student scholastic success, particularly for minority men.

Notes

1. Bermuda is often affectionately referred to as The Rock by many locals. Also, although Cyril Packwood's (1975) book, Chained on the Rock: Slavery in Bermuda, is not being directly referenced in this metaphor, it is significant to acknowledge his seminal work and the apparent, contemporary manifestations of Black Bermudian male oppression.

2. In Bermuda, discourses around race, achievement gaps, and schooling are often embedded in the overarching labels of public and private schooling, where the majority of public school students are Black (Social and Demographic Division-Department of Statistics, Bermuda, 2006) and where most private schools are read as White, even though some Black students and other students of color attend these institutions (Christopher 2009; Douglas and Gause 2009).