This article considers the complex nature of the experiences of school for
six young African-American men who were from different social class backgro
unds and attended four different schools. Through extended interviews over
the course of the 1992-1993 school year, I learned that while all the young
men were committed to acquiring a high school diploma, they simultaneously
critiqued aspects of their experiences in school. The critique included th
e disengaging pedagogy and curriculum they experienced in classrooms and th
e Eurocentric focus of their history curriculum. Notwithstanding the patter
n of critique and accommodation among the young men, there was variation in
what they chose to critique and accommodate.
My examination of the ways in which they critiqued and accommodated school
includes a consideration of the different kinds of choices the young men ma
de, the different kinds of futures they imagined for themselves, their diff
erent ideas about what was important to know, and their different meanings
of success. I argue that their different meanings of school, schooling, and
the diploma in a large measure can be explained through examining their di
fferential access to power and privilege, the ways in which they encountere
d inequality, and the ways in which they experienced the structure and cult
ure of school, I further argue that the intermingling of interconnected sys
tems of race, class, and gender in the context of their daily school lives
can be a powerful explainer of the differences, and at times the similariti
es, in the meanings they made of school.