Rationale
"Why should I learn this?", "This shit doesn't matter.", "Things will never change, anyway." These are the sentiments of many of my students - black, Latino, Chinese, Filipino, Samoan, white, Cambodian, among many others; poor and working-class; male and female; cynical and at times angry. The purpose of this unit will be to engage my students to hold established power accountable (as well as themselves) to helping actualize the vision of the founders of America as reality for my students - to unite democratic theory on the one hand with conscious youth and student action on the other.
Urban youth - particularly poor, working-class, immigrant and youth of color - will be the target population of this series of lessons. According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), youth of color are very active in their communities and they are involved in a way that transcends mere electoral politics. Building off of the rich history of democratic youth participation, as well as the already existing efforts of many of my youth in their respective communities, I want to help sharpen their analytical tools to deepen and enhance their participation.
Given the rate of incarceration, violence and other social ills afflicting working-class, poor, youth of color, this high level of participation in the democratic process (traditional or otherwise) needs to be furthered exponentially and in a way that more effectively reforms, alters, challenges and even counters the existing prescription for change. That prescription being: follow the rules, go to school, work hard, get a good job and live "the Dream". In my process of coming into consciousness, I realized that the recipe for improving one's life is actually more complex than that. Indeed, our students need to do these things, but they must do more. The commonly held belief that the existing system is fine and the cause of failure is intrinsic to the students themselves, denies the institutional nature of the problem (Duncan-Andrade 2005).
In light of their current respective conditions and relative lack of opportunities, poor, working-class, immigrant and youth of color, often express the most frustration with the current system, yet have the most to gain from a critical questioning and participation in our society. As a teacher, I believe we need to encourage our students to understand our experience in the United States with a critical lense. Cornel West states, "To engage in this Socratic questioning of America is not to trash our country, but rather to tease out those traditions in our history that enable us to wrestle with difficult realities we often deny."
Rather than "opting-out" of such participation, our youth need to become both conscious of the historical and systemic roots of the various problems facing them, as well as be equipped to do something about such problems. West continues by saying that we need to develop a "democratic paideia - the cultivation of an active, informed citizenry - in order to preserve and deepen our democratic experiment (West 2005)." Many positive lessons can be drawn from the legacy of our students' community's fight for political, economic and social rights. These lessons can be used as an impetus to stir our students into action and awaken our youth.
The spectrum of youth disinterest and lack of engagement ranges from a general apathy and/or cynicism, on the one end, to what Daniel Solorzano and Dolores Delgado-Bernal identify as "self-destructive resistance" behavior (Solorzano and Delgado-Bernal 2002) on the other end. This self-destructive resistance behavior takes the form of ditching class, truancy and general defiance that gets our youth into trouble, locked up or even killed.
Developing a strong historical awareness about the rich and positive acts of resistance of our students' communities can effectively motivate our young people toward transformational and community uplifting action. This distinction needs to be made, both to our students as well as to our teachers. In addition to this awareness, our students need to be equipped with what they need to comprehend both the stated rules of the existing system, as well as the unspoken and less visible power relations existing within it.
A challenge that I have faced in my teaching is that once students have become aware of an issue, I have failed to adequately and systematically support them in finding a place to apply their newly acquired information. The systemic awareness of our economic, political and social institutions is key, but how they may both navigate and transform these institutions by applying what they have learned, is just as important and will be incorporated into this unit.
The success of this series of lessons will ultimately be judged by the degree to which my students who are poor, working class, immigrant and historically disenfranchised, 1. become conscious of the importance of democratic participation, 2. are equipped to do something about the problems facing them and their communities and 3. actually take steps to bring about change through their critical and collective participation.
If the rates of incarceration, high school drop-out, teen-age pregnancy, alcohol/drug abuse and the like, are to be reduced, our students must actively and consciously participate in the needed change. As Rudy Corpuz, Director of an urban youth organization called United Playaz says, "It takes the hood, to save the hood." Our students need support to become conscious and critical agents to liberate themselves and change the system by holding both themselves and the institutions responsible, accountable to their interests.
This unit, Democracy (in)Action: Promoting Critical Youth Consciousness and Participation, will be implemented in my 12 th grade, American Democracy class, at Balboa High School. Couched in the Southeast section of San Francisco - an historically working-class and immigrant community of the City - my students will have a broad range of issues and problems from which to apply their newly learned tools. I have had this emerging group of intellectuals for a year now as their 11 th grade US History teacher. We will build off of last year's emphasis on uncovering and critically contrasting multiple and varying narratives to that of the institution - the so-called "master's narrative."
As they enter broader society, I wish for this lesson to provide concrete, relevant and convincing responses to their queries - that they may answer definitively, "I need to learn this, because this can change my life and the lives of my people."
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