Critical Issues in Educating African American Youth: A Talk with Jawanza Book

This is an enlightening book and also obviously the book of a young man as it is at times both overwhelmingly idealistic and alarmingly naive. Pat Conroy agreed to teach for a year on Yamacraw Island off the coast of South Carolina. There he encounters a world apart, conditions unlike anything he has encountered in his teaching on the mainland. He is to teach the children of the island, the people who used to live from fishing but now can't support themselves from polluted waters. He encounters children who are savvy but unschooled for all the time they have spent in the classroom. He learns of various types of prejudice that attack them individually and as a group in order to keep them untaught and unteachable. There is an overarching lack of concern as long as discipline is maintained.

Conroy writes of his experiments in teaching methods and his gambles with the authorities to try new activities with the children. He also daringly spares the rod! This is an eye-opening memoir, even though it is no longer a new book. It remains a worthwhile read. Perhaps my greatest take-away from it is to try to know the people to whom I speak, with whom I would like to work or deal. The surface definitely does not reveal all.

Conroy's prose is beautiful; he captures the natural world around him so wonderfully. He also captures the individual children and their families so well. You will feel that you have met many of them by the time you have finished reading this book.