Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement (Routledge Research in Education)

In postindustrial economies such as the United States and Great Britain, the black/white achievement gap is perpetuated by an emphasis on language and language skills, with which black American and black British-Caribbean youths often struggle. This work analyzes the nature of educational pedagogy in the contemporary capitalist world-system under American hegemony. Mocombe and Tomlin interpret the role of education as an institutional or ideological apparatus for capitalist domination, and examine the sociolinguistic means or pedagogies by which global and local social actors are educated within the capitalist world-system to serve the needs of capital; i.e., capital accumulation. Two specific case studies, one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom, are utilized to demonstrate how contemporary educational emphasis on language and literacy parallels the organization of work and contributes to the debate on academic underachievement of black students vis-a-vis their white and Asian counterparts.

Education & Teaching

MoCombe, Paul C.

Tomlin, Carol

Schools & Teaching

Routledge

Paul Mocombe takes on a giant of black sociology, Dr. William Du Bois, challenging his famous thesis in the Souls of Black Folk. Proposing an original socio-historic interpretation of black consciousness, Mocombe offers an engaging, combative and insightful theory vital for considering the state of black America today.

The Soul-less Souls of Black Folk: A Sociological Reconsideration of Black Consciousness as Du Boisian Double Consciousness

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University Press of America

The Liberal Black Protestant Heterosexual Bourgeois Male: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Barack Obama

In this book, Mocombe illustrates ways that Barack Obama is the embodiment of the social identity as the liberal black Protestant heterosexual male. This is an identity best represented in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois.

History

Americas

In this book, Mocombe illustrates ways that Barack Obama is the embodiment of the social identity, the liberal black Protestant heterosexual male, that contemporarily looks to serve as the bearer of ideological and linguistic domination for all folks, blacks, whites, Asians, etc., in America and world societies impacted by Western civilization. The articulation of the discourse of this identity is best represented in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois; furthermore, Obama is a paragon for Du Bois' construct. This work juxtaposes the ideals and practices of Du Bois and Obama in order to articulate the discourse and discursive practice of the soulless social identity that seeks to institute its presence in the post-enlightenment world.

Mocombe and Tomlin explore the black/white achievement gap in America and Great Britain, gaining understanding through black bourgeois living and the labeled pathologies of the black underclass. Within the class dualism of capitalist social relations, blacks throughout the Diaspora attempt to exist in the world. Furthermore, blacks must construct their identities and be in the world by choosing between the discursive practices of the Protestant and capitalist ideology of the black Protestant bourgeoisie, or the beliefs of the black underclass, which appear to dismiss these practices as 'acting-white' (John Ogbu's term). Presently, the practical consciousness (constituted as hip-hop culture) of the black underclass, supported by finance capital, have dominated the American and global social structure, and one of its (dys)functions is the black/white achievement gap, which is a global phenomenon emanating from black America and affecting blacks around the globe. Although the histories of blacks in America and in Great Britain are fundamentally different, Mocombe and Tomlin argue in this work that during the age of globalization, the social functions of the dominating black consciousness (hip-hop culture) coming out of America are the locus of causality for the black/white achievement gap in America and Great Britain. Tomlin highlights this problematic by analyzing effective strategies employed by high achieving blacks in Great Britain, and Mocombe does the same through an analysis of an effective reading curriculum in an American inner-city after-school program.

The Oppositional Culture Theory

Against John Ogbu’s oppositional culture theory and Claude Steele’s disidentification hypothesis, Jesus and the Streets offers a more appropriate structural Marxian hermeneutical framework for contextualizing, conceptualizing, and evaluating the locus of causality for the black male/female intra-racial gender academic achievement gap in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Positing that in general the origins of the black/white academic achievement gap in both countries is grounded in what Paul C. Mocombe refers to as a “mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function.” Within this structural Marxist theoretical framework the intra-racial gender academic achievement gap between black boys and girls, the authors argue, is a result of the social class functions associated with industries (mode of production) and ideological apparatuses, i.e., prisons, the urban street life, athletics and entertainment, where the majority of urban black males in the US and UK achieve their status, social mobility, and economic gain, and the black church/education where black females in both countries are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve their status, social mobility, and drive for economic gain via education and professionalization.

Jesus and the Streets: The Loci of Causality for the Intra-Racial Gender Academic Achievement Gap in Black Urban America and the United Kingdom

Showunmi, Victoria

Identity and Ideology in Haiti

Africa

In postindustrial economies such as the United States and Great Britain, the black/white achievement gap is perpetuated by an emphasis on language and language skills, with which black American and black British-Caribbean youths often struggle. This work analyzes the nature of educational pedagogy in the contemporary capitalist world-system under American hegemony. Mocombe and Tomlin interpret the role of education as an institutional or ideological apparatus for capitalist domination, and examine the sociolinguistic means or pedagogies by which global and local social actors are educated within the capitalist world-system to serve the needs of capital; i.e., capital accumulation. Two specific case studies, one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom, are utilized to demonstrate how contemporary educational emphasis on language and literacy parallels the organization of work and contributes to the debate on academic underachievement of black students vis-a-vis their white and Asian counterparts.

Using a structurationist, phenomenological structuralism understanding of practical consciousness constitution as derived from what the author calls Haitian epistemology, Haitian/Vilokan Idealism, this book explores the nature and origins of the contemporary Haitian oppositional protest cry, "the children of Pétion v. the children of Dessalines." Although traditionally viewed within racial terms – the mulatto elites v. the African (black) poor majority – Mocombe suggests that the metaphor, contemporarily, as utilized by the educated black grandon class (middle-class bourgeois blacks) has come to represent Marxist categories for racial-class (nationalistic) struggles on the island of Haiti within the capitalist world-system under American hegemony. The ideological position of Pétion represents the neoliberal views of the mulatto/Arab elites and petit-bourgeois blacks; and nationalism, economic reform, and social justice represent the ideological and nationalistic positions of Dessalines as articulated by the grandon, actual children of Toussaint Louverture, seeking to speak for the African majority (the children of Sans Souci, the Congolese-born general of the Haitian Revolution) whose practical consciousness, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism, differ from both the children of Dessalines and Pétion. In the final analysis, the moniker is a truncated understanding of Haitian identity constitution, ideologies, and their oppositions.

Identity and Ideology in Haiti: The Children of Sans Souci, Dessalines/Toussaint, and Pétion

Mocombe's Reading Room Series In 1999, Paul C. Mocombe created the Mocombeian Curriculum for The Russell Life Skills and Reading Foundation, Inc. A language based curriculum, it was designed to help inner-city youth close the achievement gap by becoming superior readers. To help reach more youth, Dr. Mocombe founded the Mocombeian Foundation, Inc. in 2008 as a 501 c3 non-profit organization to help disseminate the curriculum state and nationwide free of charge. The Curriculum consists of a series (Mocombe's Reading Room Series) of six books to be utilized by parents, teachers, and volunteers to help students read better and close the achievement gap. Each book consists of grade appropriate lessons based on national standards in phonics, grammar, vocabulary, and reading, labeled accordingly, in order to teach students how to read (the Mocombeian Strategy). The idea behind this strategy is that the mastering of Standard English language skills will make all students better readers, and enhance their educational experience. To learn about more products from Mocombe's Reading Room Series, visit WWW.MOCOMBEIAN.COM

Mocombe's Reading Room Series: K

Children's Books

Activities, Crafts & Games

Xlibris

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MoCombe, Paul C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MoCombe, Paul C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MoCombe, Paul C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement (Routledge Research in Education)

The Soul-less Souls of Black Folk: A Sociological Reconsideration of Black Consciousness as Du Boisian Double Consciousness

The Liberal Black Protestant Heterosexual Bourgeois Male: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Barack Obama

The Liberal Black Protestant Heterosexual Bourgeois Male: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Barack Obama

The Oppositional Culture Theory

Jesus and the Streets: The Loci of Causality for the Intra-Racial Gender Academic Achievement Gap in Black Urban America and the United Kingdom

Identity and Ideology in Haiti

Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement (Routledge Research in Education)

Identity and Ideology in Haiti: The Children of Sans Souci, Dessalines/Toussaint, and Pétion

Mocombe's Reading Room Series: K