School was not just a place of instruction—it was a first and last chance. Black boys who failed at school did not, from what I saw, generally go on to better things. More often, they did not go on at all. I think that what we were being taught was less a body of knowledge than a way to be in the world: orderly, organized, attentive to direction. There is nothing wrong with developing those skills—in fact, I’ve learned the hard way how useful they can be. What is wrong is their fetishization, the way they were allowed to outrank the actual body of knowledge held within algebra or English lit.
