Structural Violence Against Youth: Empowering Youth to Tackle the Barriers of Criminalization
Structural Violence Against Youth: Empowering Youth
to Tackle the Barriers of Criminalization
Youth are increasingly being described as a nuisance to society who are decreasing in quality and intruding adult life. The complaint of a crying child on an airplane, the shaking head of an elderly man to a young man sagging his pants, and girls not acting lady like enough. These are just a few general examples of how youth are being criminalized for being. Neoliberal, white supremacy policies that incorporate self-interest and self-preservation are devastating the institutions that assist in providing successful protective factors for students (Giroux, 2001). These policies began with Nixon’s massive cuts to social programs and Reagan’s war on drugs, which gave youth of color nothing to do and nowhere to go, resulting in a rise of gangs (Rodriguez, 2005). Then there was the privatization of prisons, criminalization of social policy, and zero tolerance clauses that have trickled down to the police department overseeing discipline in our public schools with youth of color. It is our job as educators to challenge neoliberal hegemony discourse when working with youth, so they can critically think about their own experiences and ‘transform their relations of subordination and oppression.’ (Giroux, 2001). Thus, youth can become critical citizens, challenge and question institutions, and assert their rights.
The problem I am set out to address is that our youth are being squeezed out of society. Their view points and voice are being silenced, and they are viewed as an irritant and intrusion into adult life. My main argument is that teaching youth about the structural forces that cause the framework of youth oppression can empower them to push against the very barriers. Educating youth can create youth movements and give them the necessary language to tackle through oppression of themselves or others. The key points from the texts include how neoliberal policies have created structural forces that removed public good resources to create profit. Additionally, zero tolerance policies are creating a pipeline for oppressed students into prisons, rather than programs to rehabilitate youth to choose a positive path.
The notion of taking care of tomorrow’s leaders has shifted away, and youth are viewed as a burden rather than social good. R. J. Smith (2000) describes students that are a burden as coming from broken homes, working-class fatalities, having bad manners, and uncensored rage. Smith analyzes black culture versus poor white youth, which generalizes all African Americans as criminals who engage in welfare fraud and abuse drugs. This perspective pushes ‘African Americans to the lowest level of the racial hierarchy’ (Morrison, 1993). However, Smith fails to either realize or explain the intertwining of structural framework that influence these issues for families and youth to take place (Giroux, 2001). Views similar to Smith’s arguments are shifting the perspective of our politics. The shift is moving away from investing in the leaders of tomorrow to containment and militarization. Rather than demonize youth and push them out of sight, we need to understand them and empower them. Youth are in need of learning oppositional language to stand up for their beliefs against adults and institutions that oppose them without looking at the bigger picture.
Cultural Imperialism, such as market driven ideologies and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates have created schools to focus on test scores and behavior management rather than the discourse of leadership, the creation of critical citizens, or in critical thinking and collective alliance to question and resist such ideologies. Instead, students are in schools that lack teaching the language to relate to the self and their community, social responsibility, or democratic life. These students should be learning how to respect others, have critical inquiry through dialogue, reflections and action, the language to practice civic courage, and a concern for the collective good. These traits will be a strong foundation for youth movement and push back on structural forces. Youth of color are inundated and conditioned by discourse on privatization, individualism, self-interest, and unhealthy competitiveness. Giroux (2001) states, “As compassion and understanding give way to rigidity and intolerance, schools increasingly become more militarized and function as a conduit to the penal system.” For example, schools who do not meet certain standards and test scores, risk being taken over by the state and turned into military influenced schools (e.g. JROTC). Additionally, our public schools with youth of color have armed police officers, locked doors, drug searches, and students are arrested in front of classmates. Being arrested at school has ‘psychological, political, and social consequences‘ that has unfortunately been normalized rather than questioned. With the suppression of whole child education, a lack of athletics, arts, music, health, counseling services, gang and drug prevention and intervention services (e.g. Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz, CA), and with an adoption of zero tolerance polices, we are funneling our youth of color into the penal system, decreasing their attachment and appreciation for school, and creating a cultural genocide.
Bhabha (2005)’s article stated that we need to concentrate on structural forces that cause global inequality, and realize that a disproportionate number of children have little political power and leverage. She challenges readers to honor the rights of agency without abandoning our obligation to protect children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) should be included in curriculum along the developmental timeline from kindergarten into college. Although, the United States has yet to ratify the CRC, teaching youth about these conventions (e.g. CRC) and Declarations (e.g. UDHR), as well as teaching about the very forces that are causing global inequality (e.g. deindustrialization, economic restructuring, domestic militarization, etc.), can give them a sense of agency to stand up for themselves and to stand up for others.
Kwon (2006) discusses how youth banded together to stop the expansion of a juvenile hall. Three basic guiding principles for the success were: youth ownership, community involvement, and promoting social justice. Kwon examines the “repressive social and political climate that served as the breeding ground for a politicized youth of color identity, and then...the three factors that attributed to the success of the young people’s activism.” Kwon explains how the criminalization of youth trend arose when President Ronald Reagan’s administration targeted social services for low-income communities in the 1980s. The Trickle-Down Economics of self-interest and self-preservation has infiltrated our society as a norm, causing the blame to shift to poor, racial, minority families, and then an eventual demonizing and criminalization of youth. Criminalizing youth have also caused a perspective shift of our youth in legislation, with a wave of propositions that entail zero tolerance ideas that cause harsh consequences (e.g. three strike rule, gang related violence causing juveniles tried as adults, curtailing health for undocumented immigrants, ending bilingual education, etc.). Next, there was an increase in spending for prison and juvenile hall expansions, which paralleled higher juvenile arrest rates for youth of color, and a proportionate decrease of spending on education, scholarships, and child protective services. With the help of community organizing, the youth described in Kwon’s article banded together against the expansion of the juvenile hall after understanding youth criminalization and identifying youth incarceration as a social problem. These youth used social justice strategies, such as marches, protest rallies, attending board meetings, conducting phone calls and public demonstrations and informing the public with door-to-door visits. They also developed an oppositional consciousness toward youth criminalization by learning self and social awareness of youth incarceration as a social problem. The youth were able to identify the need to stop the expansion of the juvenile hall due to the real consequences it has on the everyday lives of themselves and their friends.
Youth such as those described in Kwon’s article, need to tackle the barriers that society places upon them. They need to understand the repercussions for continuing the cycle of these stereotypes, gain agency among themselves and develop a critical analysis of youth criminalization. Kwon (2006) explains, when youth understand the mainstream media representations of youth of color as dangerous and violent as proposed by proposition 21 in California, they can refuse to submit to this discourse, and push back against the portrayal of themselves as delinquents. If educators use teaching methodologies that other youth have created (e.g. spoken word, documentaries, etc.), this can help increase youth’s understanding of their actions and choose the path of nonviolence and greatness. Additionally, exposing youth to other youth movement organizations (e.g. Youth Speaks, Youth Uprising, and Youth Radio) can empower and motivate them to follow lead or create their own movements. Therefore, an emphasis on human rights education in schools with the theoretical framework similar to organizations and pedagogical theory described in Kwon’s article, can create youth to counter this trend of criminalization of themselves, their community, and the oppressed around the world.
According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, “education involves more people than any other institutionalized activity worldwide.” At the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the UN General Assembly asserted a World Decade for Human Rights Education. The resolution targeted education on all levels in order to achieve, “the full development of the human personality in a spirit of peace, mutual understanding, and respect for democracy and law.” These principles were directed using methodologies favoring participatory, interactive, and culturally relevant methods (Claude, 2005). As an educator, it is important to know about human rights and activism education.
PEDAGOGICAL TOOL
Curriculum encompassing human rights can help educate and empower youth about these issues. Giving students the opportunity to view youth faced with similar problems around the world, who are overcoming obstacles and pushing against oppression, can create a relatedness within youth to empower them to follow and spread the awareness to others. Providing the space for individual thought about current issues and solutions can create an internal motivation to push back on the neoliberal forces that created the cultural idealism, and in turn, militarization and the education normal in the first place. Youth should break the silence on violence, and yell loud and proud about change and hope.
Paulo Freire (1970) was concerned about social transformation by the oppressed to give rise to their conscious, and activate them to take action, which has been coined, “emancipatory transformation.” Freire states,
“[The] more radical he [sic] is, the more fully he enters into reality, so that, knowing it better, he can better transform it. He is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. he is not afraid to meet the people or enter into dialogue with them. He does not consider himself the proprietor of history or of men [sic], or the liberator of the oppressed; but he does commit himself, within history, to fight at their side. (pp. 23-25)”
Freire’s work is complemented in the transformative model, and is important for human rights education, because it fosters both personal and social change (TIbbitts, 2005). Giving youth a perspective shift on their reality helps challenge their moral and ethical values, and gives them a sense of responsibility for society. Using Freire’s work, transformative learning brings in mixed methods of teaching in order for an educator to be the mediator of learning, rather than a director, as in traditional teaching (Love, 2009). Love (2009) uses examples of transformative methodologies, such as: oral histories, awareness, art, activism, field trips, connecting with members of the community, media, group discussions, and other projects to provide students with a deeper understanding of the concepts they are learning. I use these ideas when creating a curriculum regarding raising awareness of past and current human rights issues using art and multimedia. The pedagogical tool is a series of lessons on human rights issues from local to global.. Using the transformative teaching model, the lesson plans will incorporate multi-media (e.g. videos), oral history (reading others’ experiences), activism, and art (e.g. creating different mediums to spread awareness) in order to bring the superficial surface level of issues to a deeper understanding, relationship, and ownership of the current problems.
Most of the human rights curriculum found was geared towards high school and college students. However, starting human rights curriculum earlier and providing a language for youth to oppose structural framework is an important goal I wish to achieve. Strategies used to develop this curriculum take on a transformative approach by raising awareness of the issues, using oral history to gain empathy and a relationship to individuals first handedly experiencing these issues, and by implementing the arts and media. Multimedia is used for students to consume information with the hopes it will churn to awareness, and then into action. Social media is used for students to spread their knowledge to others. These mediums will be used to give a lesson on activism strategies. Within the curriculum, students’ views will be heard first (teacher as facilitator), rather than teaching what their views should be (traditional or ‘banking method’). This will be done in small groups or in partners, where they will discuss questions posed, then share out to the larger group.
STRUGGLES OF TEACHING HUMAN RIGHTS
Although students may not develop a sense of responsibility to end human rights violations by encountering others’ stories, they are in the very least creating a habit of the assumption to study violence in their everyday social context (Pauchulo, 2012). Although learning about human rights issues can be daunting and have a feeling of hopelessness, I find it important to incorporate in the curriculum I developed to end the lesson on a positive note and on solutions we can do today. I also find it important for students to understand themselves and who they are in the world. With that in mind, I incorporated ‘I am’ poems into the curriculum. These poems created by the students help construct who they are now and who they want to be in the future. An important aspect of this poem is that the teacher (facilitator) also does a poem and reads aloud to the class. This allows the teacher and students to ‘establish greater connections, and it provides teachers with the opportunity to gain interpersonal capital with students.’ (Romero, Arce & Cammarota, 2009).
Some materials from our current Violence Against Youth course can also be used to connect and empower students. ‘Lost Count: A Love Story’ is a video of high school students poetry regarding Chicago’s epidemic of kids killing kids. This video expressed that gang violence against youth is prevalent in other areas of the world and that youth are speaking against it. The youth produced documentary, ‘Papers,’ and oral histories from Voice of Witness can be relatable. The Papers documentary is produced by undocumented youth interviewing other undocumented youth, and Voice of Witness is oral narratives from individuals faced with human rights violations. Exposing the methods of how others express facts by using creative outlets regarding how these structural forces are shaping our lives can be powerful. In turn, youth can feel confident in resisting structural forces, become critical and compassionate citizens, and learn the discourse to challenge institutions.
CONCLUSION
A further analysis of this curriculum to provide counter narratives would be to include the Critical Race Theory (CRT) and tri-dimensioned reality proposed by Romero, Arce and Cammarota (2009).
Rodriguez (2005) summarizes the efforts that need to take place to our oppressed youth and their families:
“We need more at the front end, with schools that are attentive, tolerant, and inclusive; with help for families that need jobs, counseling, and education; with jobs and training for youth that will lead to work they are passionate about; and to spiritually engaging work in churches, sweat lodge circles, Aztec dance, as well as full-blown resources in the art, music, poetry, theatre, and the media...We need more people who see that every child is valuable and that every child can be saved...Perhaps if we make the concerns of our kids paramount, the interests of the few powerful, embittered adults will not win out.” (p. 20).
The future needs to be brighter for these youth, and their hopes need to become a reality. Without action from citizens, policy makers, and educators to diminish the structural violence against youth, the future for capable and potential youth will be grim. Sharing knowledge with our youth can change the structures of oppression. Educating youth about human rights and the structural forces that cause the issues they are facing should be brought into the space of learning that a classroom provides from a transformative learning lens. Youth should have the space to be outraged, the language to challenge, and the ability to take action.
References
Bhabha, J. (2005). The child - What sort of human? The humanities in human rights: Critique, language, and politics, 121(5), 1526-1535
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder
Kwon, S. A. (2006). Youth of color organizing for juvenile justice. In S. Ginwright, P. Noguera & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond Resistance: Youth Activism and Community Change; New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth. New York: Routledge, pp. 215-227
Love, K. (2009). Transformative teaching methods. Retrieved from www.slideshare.net/drloveccsu/transformative-teaching-methods#btnnext
Morrison, T. (1993). On the backs of blacks. Time 142(21), Fall 1993: 57
Pauchulo, A.L. (2012). Encountering breakdowns in human rights education. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 24(1), 14-21
Rodriguez, L. (2005). The end of the line: California gangs and the promise of street peace. Social Justice, 32(3), 12-23)
Romero, A., Arce, S. & Cammarota, J. (2009). A barrio pedagogy: Identity, intellectualism, activism, and academic achievement through the evolution of critically compassionate intellectualism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(2), 217-233
Smith, R.J. (2000). Among the mooks. New york times magazine, 6 August 2000, 38
Tibbitts, F. (2005). Transformative learning and human rights education: Taking a closer look. Intercultural Education, 16(2).