Making Sense of the Journey: African American Males’ Experiences at Three Elite Jesuit High Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Boys to Men: Resilience and Black Male Students

Abstract

Having been lauded for their students’ attendance at elite colleges and universities, and graduation rates that exceed 95%, the Jesuit secondary education model emphasizes the importance of schooling to the formation of character, and a desire to integrate both the humanistic need to serve others with the scholastic need to excel academically. A review of literature seems to indicate that the experiences of African American males at Jesuit schools, and other private schools, has been under studied in both the larger body of research on African American males and the experiences of African Americans at Catholic schools. As such, this paper explores the experiences of 40 African American males attending 3 Jesuit high schools in the United States.

Author

• Robert Weldon Simmons, Loyola University Maryland