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One student highlighted the difference in access to technology within the classroom and its effect on student learning: “I went to [a science class where] a girl gave a presentation about abortion. She had slides to show everyone on a slide projector and a computer]… when we had that in our school we just did a poster.” Several, having also visited science classes, followed up with remarks on the “real” science laboratories: the lab equipment, the sinks in the rooms, the materials for experiments. It was clear, in their minds, that the students at this suburban school enjoy an academic advantage because of the resources they largely take for granted.
In noting structural inequities between suburbs and cities, these students nevertheless refuse to shrink from holding themselves and their peers to standards of accountability. Berating peers whom they see as not holding up their part of the bargain, they believe strongly in an ethic of individual responsibility. But they cannot ignore the many places where the state fails to provide the necessary resources: “By not giving enough schoolbooks or computers, some schools say, ‘You’re never going to amount to anything’. . .a child hears that and they say, ‘Oh well. They say that’s what I’m gonna do, that’s what I’m gonna do.’” This young woman spoke, unknowingly, in an echo of the betrayal voiced by her peers in California.
From this work we begin to see not only a profound distress at the lack of public accountability, but the virus of mistrust spreading toward politicians, the state, and government in general. This generation has grown up without memory of a state that stood for the people, a social safety net, or a collective common sense of “we.” They are a generation born into privatization of the public sphere and privatization of the soul. They are held accountable, but the state and the school system are off the hook.
The youth research on public education suggests a persuasive strategy for democratizing public accountability. In this work, the state and schools became the “subjects” of analysis, while youth developed the skills of researchers. In the process, however, poor and workingclass youth collected much data to confirm (unfortunately) their suspicion that the “public” sphere is no longer designed for them, but on their backs. As poor and working-class students they may have felt betrayed; as researchers for public accountability of public education, they were outraged.
Demanding a Public Sphere
In the early part of the twenty-first century, social policies of financial inequity transform engaged and enthused students into young women and men who believe that the nation, adults, and the public sphere have abandoned and betrayed them, in the denial of quality education, democracy, and the promise of equality. They know that race, class, and ethnicity determine who receives, and who is denied, a rich public education. And they resent the silence they confront when they challenge these inequities.
In California, the interviewed youth attend schools where low expectations and severe miseducation prevail. In New York, the youth researchers attend a school of vibrant educational possibility and high standards, despite severe financial inequities. In both cases, however, federal offers of “choice” and “flexibility” ring hollow and sound insincere. What are their choices? What flexibility can they exercise? In states and cities scarred by severe financial inequity and/or inadequacy,a discourse of choice thinly masks public betrayal. Such federal policy leaves most poor and working-class children behind.
Poor and working-class youth of color carry a keen and astute consciousness for accountability. They condemn financial inequity and educational redlining, and reject standardized testing as a valid assessment of their knowledge. They witness juvenile detention facilities being constructed in their neighborhoods, as public schools crumble and/or shut their doors. Most, as Hirschman would predict, exit high school prior to graduation. But those who stay are generous enough to offer us a powerful blend of possibility and outrage. Demanding accountability from the bottom, they ask only for a public sphere that represents the interests of all. They ask not for the choice to leave; nor for the opportunity to take a test that misrepresents memorization as learning. They want simply to be well educated, in their own communities, in their own well-funded and intellectually thrilling schools.
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