Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Crash or Crash Through: Part 2 583
learning. An essential and all too rare focus might be on building solidarity within communities,
such that social networks extend across the boundaries of ethnicity, social class, and age.
Schema that appear to be hegemonic for urban youth are beliefs that they are not university
bound, do not enter professions such as medicine, and must overcome deficits associated with
their ethnicity and social class through individual efforts, talent, and hard work. Schema such as
these are counter to those that highlight the centrality of successfully accessing and appropriating
resources in successful interactions, thereby generating positive emotional energy and solidarity
within a community of learners. If efforts can be directed to the creation of collective commitments
throughout a community and across boundaries such as those previously identified, then the
success of students like Amira is more likely.
CODA
Amira graduated from high school after what was a roller-coaster ride replete with contradictions.
In her senior year she left home and struggled to support herself with a variety of
minimum-wage jobs. Even though she is presently in her freshman year of college, participating
in a pre-med program, her grades are precarious and her eventual success remains dubious. Even
so, I do not count her out. Amira remains committed to becoming a doctor and struggles against
the forces that steer her off course. That agency is dialectically constituted with structure does not
preclude Amira from becoming a doctor and fulfilling her dreams. Rather, through her agency,
Amira can appropriate structures to navigate chosen pathways successfully, ignoring temptations
to appropriate structures in pursuit of other goals, and identifying and crashing through hegemony,
thereby resisting oppression and its reproductive cycles.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research in this chapter is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.
REC-0107022. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
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Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. New York:
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Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C. (1990). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (2nd ed.). London:
Sage.
Boykin, A. W. (1986). The triple quandary and the schooling of Afro-American children. In U. Neisser
(Ed.), The School Achievement of Minority Children: New Perspectives (pp. 57–92). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.