In Black America; Beating The Odds with Dr. Freeman Hrabowski

No healing. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. Well, we know that if you're a physician, you can give your child more opportunities. But the fact is that we found families of single mothers who, in some cases, the finished high school, in some cases, may not have finished high school,

who were able to do just as much for their sons. And it wasn't because they knew calculus. It was because they knew how to pay attention and how to ask questions and to watch and see if the child was doing his homework at night, and to ask him to talk about the work. It was the involvement and the engagement that was far more important than the education. We want to encourage all people to get as much education as possible. But the message this book sends is that I don't get what your circumstances are. Whether you're from a rural community or suburban community and urban community, whether you ever set a foot in the college or not. The fact is that you as a parent have the ability to help your son deep the odds. You can not. You're involvement in telling him he's special and insisting that he follow the rules and explaining me the difference between right and wrong and through spirituality and through the reading skills and left television. You can't help your son succeed. Your child succeed. Very important message. Dr. Freeman A. Herbowski III, president, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of the book, Beating the odds, raising academically successful African-American males

published by Oxford Press. In his book, Herbowski Tell parents and educators how African-American males can get back on track and achieve academic success. New statistics reveals that young African-American males are more likely to go to prison than graduate from college, making it clear that there's a striking disadvantage to being born black and male in this country. Today, the reality is that the self-esteem of many young African-American males blitzed by advertising and the media with confusing stereotypes and images of what should be important to them is relative to athletic skill and popularity rather than academic success. I'm John A. Johansson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Beating the odds with author Dr. Freeman A. Herbowski III in Black America. One of the points in this book is that parents need a chance to talk with each other about different strategies that they use and help people solve problems. You know, when we have problems with our children, usually we too embarrassed to tell other people about it.

And we're not involved with our extended family, we end up keeping it to ourselves. Parents, first of all, need opportunities to talk with other people to figure out how they can help their sons when they get off track. Because even with these successful boys, many of them at one point or another were off track, didn't do well and had to be brought back in the right place in the right direction. In terms of math and science, there are all kinds of examples of book gives of things that parents can do. For example, one mother would have the little kids count the keys on the plate before they would eat them. And then if they got a little older, she'd have them and she'd take a few away and say, now how many do you have left? And she would play math games with them like that. And she'd have them cut up the onions and cut up the vegetables and talk about one fourth of this amount and one half of that amount. But just the counting and the adding and the subtracting and talking about math and words and getting them excited about it and then taking them to McDonald's when they did well. All of that taught them to develop a kind of excitement for math. And that's what we need. We need the curiosity. The LEGOs. I mean, that's one game that I recommend to all kids and all parents of kids. LEGOs to get them to begin looking at objects and patterns and working with them together.

It's the excitement and the passion for understanding how things relate to each other that can lead to success. Beating the odds goes beyond mere analysis of relentlessly negative media images to show that you precisely how young African American males can succeed despite debilitating effects of racism, drugs, and crime as a social and economic alternative as right of passage. The book is based on interviews with parents and children from a range of social economic backgrounds from two parent households as well as single parent homes. The author examined the key attributes of the families and the young men who defied the trend and cites those constants that contribute to academic achievement and offer a step-by-step guidance on six essential strategies for effective parenting. Recently in Black America spoke with Dr. Harowski. As an African American growing up in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1950s, he constantly felt the need to hide his intelligence. He didn't question his actions until he completed his doctorate at the age of 24.

You've just written a book along with three of your other colleagues on campus beating the odds, raising academically successful African American males. Why did you feel at this particular time you and your colleagues felt that this particular work needed to be published and written? Right, Jeff Wright was a psychologist and actually a social scientist. A man and a psychologist and I began working on the book four years ago. It took us about three years to write and we wrote it because so many of the young people whom I was meeting in different settings were interested in being in a special program we have here for talented African Americans and science. It's in my whole scholarship program and interestingly enough, many parents were saying to me, parents of little children were asking the question, what can I do to make sure my child and especially my son continues to do well and is able to go to college and major in math and science. By the way, we are writing the second book right now on raising academically successful African American females.

We started with the males though because they are like other minority males in our society. They tend to be at the lower end of the latter academically and unfortunately, as you know, there are more African American males in prison than in college and we thought if we could start with that group and look at success stories and this is what we've done, that we could make a difference. We've looked at 60 families in this special program we have of students who are now in college or have already gone on to graduate or medical school of young males. And we spent three years talking with those families, all kinds of families, single mothers, single fathers, sometimes with grandmother, two parents, some educated, some not educated, talking with them about what they did to help their sons succeed in school. We divide the book into different chapters as you say. One chapter focuses on what fathers had to say about what they did for their sons and in some cases in about half the cases that were fathers who were actively involved in the lives of their children.

In several cases, it was a single father where the mother wasn't there. In fact, something we don't hear about a great deal, but it was cases. In other cases, it was the mother and who made the difference. And in some cases, both. So we wanted to hear from each type, from a father and from a mother and from large numbers what they saw as the most critical points to be made about how to raise children. And there are differences there, certainly, some differences. I should say, sometimes people say, well, a boy can't make it without a man. In the family, that's not true. The fact is that there are thousands of examples of which a mother or a grandmother has been the central figure and has done an incredibly effective job of raising her child. What I will tell you is that these single parents do talk about working to help their children to understand the importance of getting an education of, right, frankly, getting married before talking about having children because what the single parents will say is even if I'm doing a good job it's much harder to raise a child by yourself that it is always more beneficial

if you've got two people who are working together in raising that child. How important is or how difficult the peer pressure that young African-American males and we're talking about males this evening are faced with when they're trying to matriculate to young adulthood and through the educational system. There are many challenges that they face that are even greater than the challenges that my peers who grow with me in the 50s and 60s face. Everything from the mindset that says you've got to be cool and the being cool is more critical, more important than being smart. The idea that their drugs all around and their peer pressure is pushing kids to do things they might not normally do the problem of violence in the schools and in our communities and needing to fight and getting into trouble before you know it. So often a little boy can get into trouble without even realizing just because he's around other people who the trouble you see.

So that there are many obstacles in the way of our young males that can prevent them from succeeding and that's why the community starting with the family will be so important in helping those boys to overcome those obstacles and to not be brought in their progress as they move towards success. Personally I don't see the diminished system as a poor system. The parents, some of the neighbors, but you still have that nurturing and supporting system of the family unit, grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews. Within 40 years the dynamics they say have changed from my perspective I don't think they have changed to a degree in which the larger society say it is changing. How we as a people become more connected and actually utilizing the support system I think we've just gone away from utilizing that support system of being more understanding that these particular support system needs to be nurtured

and utilizing and bringing up our young people particularly males and females. You make a very good point. First of all, we rarely hear about African-American families who are successful who are doing everything they can to help their kids succeed. The ones we tend to hear about are the problems. What do you see on TV? Typically it's about black males with handcuffs or violence or drugs. How often do we hear about young black males who are doing well? In fact, I often ask the question, what black boy do we see on TV and know him for his brains? His name is Erkel. What kid wants to be like Erkel? Correct. You see, so that we don't even see examples of it. But let me talk about just to answer your question more specifically. Let me talk about the strategies that we found most effective in successful parenting and the first has to do with child-focused love. The idea that we have to start talking about what does it mean to love your child?

I mean, we say we love our children, but love has more to do with actions than words. Put it in practice. It's got to put it in practice. Let me give you an example that hits home and gets some people upset when I say it. If you love your child, you won't let your child sit in front of a TV for four hours passively, becoming more and more dull. If you really love your child and you understand that that TV is not helping your child to read or to think, then it means you have to take the time to focus on the child and that child's development. That means reading to the child when he or she is a baby. It means talking with the child. It means answering the child's question. Often, I'm in the mall here in Baltimore and I'll hear a young mother telling her kid to shut up. The worst thing you can do to a little boy, a little kid, is to try to keep them from talking. The fact is people who become good thinkers are encouraged to be curious to ask questions and to want to know different kinds of answers. And it doesn't mean the parent has to know the answer, but the parent has to at least try and work with that child to encourage that kind of curiosity.

And so we have to take the time to talk with young parents and not go young parents about what it means to spend the time with the child and to really show the love through attention and dedication. The parents in this study believed very strongly that their children should be at the center of their lives. They had spirituality at the center and these were mainly church-goers, someone Muslims, but almost all of these were spiritual people. And they believed that in addition to that spirituality, that having that child at the center of their lives and everything they do in meaning sacrificing many times, not doing what they might want to do just because they had to do it for their child. And that's that idea of child-focused love, the idea of strong limit setting and discipline. I mean, these parents tended to be probably a bit more harsh in the discipline. That is, they were much more rigorous in what they said. If they told the child that he would be punished in a certain way, if he performed in a certain way or didn't do well, or did not follow the instructions, then they followed through on that.

So often we will bread the child and tell him, if they go out of the house, what they don't do, we tell him to do, we'll punish him. And then we don't follow through. You see, it takes time to follow through with punishment. You know, it takes energy and time. When you tell a child, you're going to do something to make sure you do it. But the idea of giving limits, I mean, if the child is to be home at a certain time, if the child is not to watch with so much TV, if the child is to do a certain amount of homework, to make sure that child doesn't require the parent to spend the time. And then sometimes parents will say, well, I'm working. Well, the fact is, that's important. Of course, it's important to work, but we have to find ways to get that child to supervision necessary. We cannot leave a child by himself all the time and expect the child to be okay. And that's what you said about using extended families is important. A lot of the times these parents were working, or the single parent working, but they always would work with a sister, or with an aunt, or with a grandmother to make sure there was some adult helping them with that child. We can't raise our children by ourselves. And that's one of your points, which is a very important one. And then having continually high expectations. I mean, telling the child, the child is smart.

How often do we tell our children that they're brilliant? We don't even use that word. And yet, when they get into the workforce, when they come to my university, he had University of Maryland, Baltimore County, they are competing against kids from all over the world, Russian kids, and Taiwanese kids, and Nigerian kids. And these kids have been taught to think that they were brilliant, and they can do extremely well. We have to teach our children to feel good about their brains, about their ability to think and to think. And to feel good about being smart, and to set high expectations for themselves. And then the idea of open and consistent and strong communication is critical. We have to learn how not only to talk to our kids without shouting at them and fussing at them, but just even when it's about discipline, how to reason with them, but then we have to learn how to listen to them, whether they are three or 13. Because the way we view the world, as people in our 30s, 40s, 50s, or whatever, will be very different from the way a teenager views the world, and that child's way of view in the world has merit. Even if we don't agree with everything that he says, we have to help him to understand we think enough of him as a thinker.

That we want to hear his point of view, because if we don't listen to him, the fact is that people in the streets are listening to him. And the person who listens to him and develops that consistent communication will have the greatest influence over what he does. And then for young black males, the notion of positive racial identification and positive male identification, that is, what does it mean to be a black man and a young black boy, a young black male in our society? What are the issues and how does one handle himself in difficult situations? The worst thing we can do is to teach our boys to feel that they are victims of this society. Because once they think they are victims, then they can always say, well the man did that. You know, we have to teach them of course there is racism in our society. We know that there is prejudice in our society, but the question is, what are you going to do about your own life? We have to empower them to believe that in spite of the obstacles that they can succeed. Because otherwise there is no hope. And the key is that these families taught their boys even when they are problems with racism.

Let's talk about how we deal with those problems. But let's talk about how important it is to get the knowledge, even when the teacher is not as fair as you think the teacher should be. How do you get the knowledge? Because in the final analysis, people do judge you by what you know. And then to get to your final point about the community and about families, these families were able to draw on community resources. That means extended families, that means fraternities and sororities, that means the churches, that means community organizations, they were doing everything they could, whether it was a single mother or a grandmother or a single father or two parents, to connect their children with the resources in that neighborhood, in that community, to get other people reinforcing what the family was trying to do. Throughout all of this, the most important message is this. We cannot leave the education of our children, like boys or otherwise, to other people. We as families, as a race, have to understand our first responsibility is to prepare the child to negotiate a world that can be very cruel. A world that will be very demanding, and that means from age, believe me, when the child is born, the reading to that child,

teaching that child the difference between right and wrong, getting the child ready for kindergarten, and then staying with that child, being that advocate for that child in the schools, in the neighborhoods, all of that will be critical to the success of African-American males. Dr. Harowski, would you put any validity on the statement that integration and or desegregation had a harmful effect on African-American children at the home? I think that in many cases, in those years, when we began that process, there is no doubt that there were many people who did not understand the culture of African-American children, and the who did not have the approaches and the tools necessary to help those children do what they needed to do. When I was growing up in a segregated Birmingham, every teacher was my mother or father, every neighbor was my parent. And you knew them, you saw them every day. I knew them, and so that was that strength there.

But I will say this to you, in the families in this book come from all kinds of backgrounds. There are African-Americans, in some cases, the children are in all black schools and urban areas. In other cases, there are Ian, predominantly white schools, and can talk about white teachers and councils who were very helpful to them. And so it's very important to say that, because large numbers of our children throughout the country, African-Americans, are in classes where they are not in all black classes, and some of them are doing well, and there are excellent examples of people from all kinds of racial backgrounds who have been helpful to African-American children. And it's important that we say that, because we want to help all kinds of people to be effective without children. As we work to get families to be effective in working with all kinds of people, because the world is multiracial, as you know. But the other part I would make is this, that I have to become a little controversial here, because I go into some settings that are all minority and the children are still not doing well. Okay. I mean, we can't just say it's integration with this aggregate. There are other factors to be involved. And the other point I want to make is that there are thousands of dedicated teachers in all kinds of school systems, and we've gotten to a point on our society where we point the fingers at our teachers.

And that's a serious problem. We tend sometimes to point the finger at the school system and the teacher without realizing that it takes the whole village to raise that child. That we have to work with that teacher, even if we have to work with that teacher to figure out how to be most effective without child. Now, we have plenty of examples in this book, and this book, beating the odds about families who disagree with the school over the teacher about the placing of a child in the classroom or about the way the child was treated. But those parents or that parent would go to that school and work with that teacher or with that school to make a difference. In some cases, they ended up changing the child to another school. But in many cases, it was the active involvement that made the difference. A teacher could do much more with your child if that teacher knows you as a family. Teacher knows that she can write a note, and when people say, well, I don't have a chance to go down working, I can go to that school. There are all kinds of ways of connecting with the teacher through notes, through telephone, but the teacher needs the support of those parents or that parent in raising that child.

And the child needs to hear consistent messages between when looking at what the family says or whatever in the house is saying, with whatever is being said in that school. It's the consistency of message that will reinforce the right kind of behavior. And that's why the teacher is black, white, and Hispanic, or Asian. Yeah, that was my next question of how important is it for parents to be proactive in the education of their children and understanding that is a two-way street. You can't send Johnny off to school every day when mom never comes to the PTA meetings or ever just stopping to visit and see what's going on in the classroom. Right, mom or dad, let's put both of them together and encourage them. Well, men to be more involved and they are what Christ Franklin, to be honest with you, we find that the women are far more actively involved in their child's education than the men. Though there are some very good examples of men, we need both men and women feeling responsible for the education and development of their children. And that's whether they're married or not, Christ Franklin.

We want to encourage marriage in this book talked about, and then a very old fashioned way. And I need to say that to you that some people think it's controversial. But I know that if you put it in perspective, the fact is that the child who has two parents in that home who are loving each other and married will have a greater chance as a rule. But I can tell you that with that said, we've got excellent examples of brilliant young black males raised by a single grandmother or a single father. So it can be done. But we need to teach our children the importance of old fashioned values that we were taught years and years ago. We've gotten away from a part of that. Your point is we'll take it. We've got all the ingredients we need to have more children successful. And that is the involvement of neighbors and the involvement of the church and involvement of homes. But we've got to put it together and go back to what has sustained us throughout this century. How important is once an individual has been from that fruit of successfulness, him surrounding himself with like individuals, other males with the same ambition, the thirst for knowledge. Well, it's a critical fact that one of our problems is that for so many children, the classroom is filled with people who have been taught the importance of wanting to be smart.

And what parents have to be able to do is to, in those environments, is to find people, whether it's an older student who's successful or a young role model, some type who can counter some of the negative activity involving academics. You see, we came across boys who were doing well in school and were getting aides and then they got ridiculed and then they moved down to make a siege because then they'd be like everybody else. And then the question was what took the parents to do? And parents did all kinds of things to make the point to their children that they could not settle just for being a mediocre. Let me just read very quickly from one single father who talked about his son. This is a single father who actually had the boy when he was 14, about a time he was 19, he was raising his son. He said this one particular time I had with him was in his junior year in high school when we were going over his report card. And he blew up at me, he said look that, get off it, leave me alone. I just want to be like everybody else.

That was the first time the father said that I experienced that he was not going along with what I said. I stood back and thought a minute and told him, but you're not average. You will never average and you never will be. Even if you try to be average, you won't be. And he said he just wanted to be like somebody else in name of his friends. And I said to him, you know these people on your walls, all these pictures on your walls, Michael Jordan, those musicians, those people are not average. They tell you their average, but they're not. If they were, they wouldn't be making the millions of dollars. When I was done talking to him, I was pleased and I said to myself, but I kept telling him one thing when he was young, I would ask him, who am I? And I would say, I am your father first and your friend second. And when you become wise enough, I'll become your friend first and your father second. And I'll decide when that time comes. And that's a father focusing on his child and trying to counter all of the negativity involving trying to excel in school. Before we run off time, Dr. Bowski, does it make a difference the educational attainment of the parents?

Not necessarily. Okay. While we know that if you're a physician, you can give your child more opportunity. But the fact is that we found families of single mothers who, in some cases, finished high school in some cases may not have finished high school, who were able to do just as much for their son. And it wasn't because they knew calculus. It was because they knew how to pay attention and how to ask questions and to watch it. See if the child was doing his homework at night and to ask him to talk about the work. It was the involvement and the engagement that was far more important than the education. We want to encourage all people to get as much education as possible. But the message this book sends is that I don't get what your circumstances are. Whether you're from a rural community, a suburban community, an urban community, whether you ever set a foot in the college or not. The fact is that you, as a parent, have the ability to help your son beat the odds. You can value involvement and telling him he's special and insisting that he follow the rules and explaining to him the difference between right and wrong and through spirituality and through the reading skills and left television. You can help your son succeed, your child succeed. Very important message.

With the coming of the new millennium, science and math will be a necessity. Yeah, how do we get that message across to our young people? We have to, one of the points in this book is that parents need a chance to talk with each other about different strategies that they use and help people solve problems. You know, when we have problems with our children, usually we too embarrassed to tell other people about it. And we're not involved with our extended families. We end up keeping it to ourselves. Parents, first of all, need opportunities to talk with other people to figure out how they can help their sons when they get off track. Because even with these successful boys, many of them at one point or another were off track, didn't do well and had to be brought back into the right direction. In terms of math and science, there are all kinds of examples of book gives of things that parents can do. For example, one mother would have the little kids count the peas on the plate before they would eat them. And then as they got a little older, she'd have them and she'd take a few away and say, now how many do you have left? And she would play math games with them like that. She'd have them cut up the onions and cut up the vegetables and talk about one-fourth of this amount and one-half of that amount. But just the counting and the adding and the subtracting and talking about math and words and getting them excited about it and then taking them to McDonald's when they did well.

All of that taught them to develop a kind of excitement for math. And that's what we need. We need the curiosity. The LEGOs. I mean, that's one game that I recommend to all kids and all parents of kids. The LEGOs to get them to begin looking at objects and patterns and working with them together. The excitement and the passion for understanding how things relate to each other that can lead to success in the math and science. And most important when talking about success in math as a math teacher, I will tell you reading and thinking skills will be critical. So the more the child is reading and the less time spent on television, the greater the probability that child will do well in reading and math and science. Dr. Freeman A. Herbowski III, president, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of the book, Beat of the Yars, raising academically successful African-American males, published by Oxford Press. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions asked to your future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA Technical Reduce at David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America Cassettes. Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America Cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America.

Parenting is not a science. Noise and nodding is something that we develop as we can experiment and work and talk with other people. Most of all, to believe in themselves so they can help their children to succeed. Be in the eyes with Dr. Freeman A. Habowski III this week on in Black America.