Bad Boys

Ann Arnett Ferguson spent 3 years gathering research on African American youth in the school and how Adults, society, and the educational system views them. The superiors of these kids have a wrongfully prejudice conceptualization of them, more specifically the boys. Observations and stories of individual students help Ferguson make connections and find the underlying source of these kids’ preconceived notions to Adults and more importantly themselves. “In the course of course of my study it became clear that school labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined” Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (University of Michigan, 2000) p2.
Adultification does not have a simple definition. Ferguson theorized this idea while observing different kids during her case study. The term adultification describes the developmental process of youth and how outlying factors such as social and communal values are absorbed by kids. There is a prejudice that these observed teacher hold of these kids. These teachers use how the media portrays African American males to justify their views about all African American kids. This adultification is a distraction from the fact that they are kids, not criminals. “Adultification is visible in the way African American elementary school pupils are talked about by school adults” Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (University of Michigan, 2000) p83. Adultification also contains the theme of gender and gender roles. I think that this is more specific for the girls. African American girls are apparently portrayed in a more sexualized way leading to earlier promiscuity. “These [identity] types are grounded in the