Second Rate Citizens: Social Studies and Structural Inequalities in an American High School

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Civic Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

Overview: This paper explores the provision for Social Studies education in an American high school, presenting data that raises large questions about the effectiveness and manifestations of the ‘knowledge-based’ state provision. This paper more specifically draws attention to the civic experience and learning deficits the mainstream students are facing compared to their enhanced magnet-program counterparts. More specifically, this paper:

• Examines the current provision for social studies in Florida at high-school level;
• Explores how the provision is being manifested at classroom level in the case study school;
• Presents quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data about student civic experiences and learning at the school; and,
• Discusses the implications of the findings, making recommendations for future policy and practice.

Theoretical Framework: Kahne shows evidence of a “civic learning opportunity gap", in that students who are poorer, and attend programs with more minority students, tended to have fewer civic learning opportunities than students on programs with a wealthier and whiter student body. Giroux & Schmidt have also suggested that American schools have become institutional breeding grounds for racism, right-wing paramilitary cultures, social intolerance, sexism and homophobia. Magnet programs, synonymous with ‘giftedness’ and therefore ‘whiteness’ (Staiger 2004), are exacerbating the existing civic achievement gap and providing a platform for the unequal and sometimes biased transmission of civic learning and opportunity.

Methods/Data Sources: This in-depth, year-long case study, involved over 600 students and teachers from one diverse urban American high school which operates a large sought-after magnet program for ‘gifted’ students. The data presented in this paper is drawn from 3 months ethnographic observation, 361 student surveys, 118 essays and 58 interviews with students and social studies teaching staff. The data were analysed using SPSS and thematic analysis.

Results/Conclusions: If youth are to have a capacity for active citizenship, then schools have a vital role to play in nurturing the civic development of young people and their capacity to live in a community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this research reveals practices that create exclusionary access to civic learning, opportunity and experience; this paper reports the disadvantages mainstream students are facing. All young people should be viewed as crucial social resources, and society needs to provide them with the equal education, opportunity and care that they need in order to face the problems of a complex and demanding society.

Scholarly Significance: This study is important as it contributes to the dearth of youth-focused accounts in civic literature. In examining youth voice we can better understand the civic ‘deficiency’ that some youth find themselves in and better assist policy to engage modern youth to be active citizens.

Author

• Claire Elizabeth Crawford, Cardiff University