Transformative Civic Education for Students Living in Deep Poverty

• In Event: Building School Communities for Students Living in Deep Poverty: Strategies for Success

Abstract

This panelist is a nationally and internationally recognized authority on inclusive and culturally responsive curriculum and on the importance of civic education as a way of reducing “failed citizenship.” He argues that learning the value and significance of civic empowerment is critically important for historically marginalized students, including those students who live in households experiencing deep poverty.

The author ‘s research indicates the United States is experiencing a civic crisis because of the large number of Americans who do not vote or participate in the civic community because they lack political efficacy and empowerment. They believe that they cannot influence political and economic decisions that affect their lives by participating in electoral politics. An important indication of the lack of political efficacy in the United States is the low level of voting. In the 2016 Presidential election, only 61.4% of Americans voted. Although civic participation and voting rates are low for the general population in the United States, they are even lower for people who are marginalized because of their racial, ethnic, cultural, and social-class characteristics. People who live in deep poverty, like other marginalized groups, participate at very low in the political system because they experience what the author calls “failed citizenship.”

Failed citizenship exits when individuals or groups who are born within a nation or migrate to it and live within it for an extended period of time do not internalize the values and ethos of the nation-state, feel structurally excluded within it, and have highly ambivalent feeling towards it. Individuals who experience failed citizenship focus primarily on their own needs for political efficacy, group identity, structural inclusion, and survival rather than on the overarching and idealized goals of the nation-state. Their allegiance and commitment to the nation-state is fluid, ambiguous, and complex.

Schools can be a catalyst for emerging from the nation’s civic crisis by helping students to acquire political efficacy by implementing transformative civic education— which will reduce failed citizenship by helping students who live in deep poverty to acquire political efficacy, structural inclusion, and civic action skills.

Transformative civic education also helps students to acquire political literacy and the knowledge and skills required to actively participate in their communities, nation, and the global community. A transformative civic education curriculum incorporates the voices and perspectives of diverse groups, including people who live in deep poverty. A major goal of a transformative curriculum is to teach students to know, to care, and to act in ways that will develop and foster a democratic and just society in which students from diverse groups will experience cultural democracy and cultural empowerment. Knowing, caring, and acting intersect and are tightly interrelated.

The essential question this panelist will address is: How can schools and school districts implement transformative learning opportunities for students living in deep poverty that will empower them to become active citizens?

Author

• James A. Banks, University of Washington