Chapter 1: Teaching for Citizenship in Urban Schools

Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) book, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, brought public attention to the plight of urban education, where mostly children of color live in poverty and navigate a crumbling school system, a lack of basic resources like teachers and textbooks, and an irrelevant curriculum. As a result, youth and families experience a disconnection between themselves and the public schools (Gay, 2013).

This disconnection poses challenges for the teaching of citizenship in urban settings. In their article, “Civic Lessons: The Color and Class of Betrayal,” Michelle Fine and her colleagues (2004) argued that “poor and working-class youth of color are reading these conditions of their school as evidence of their social disposability and evidence of public betrayal” (p. 2194). So while many see public schools as cultivators of a democratic ethos and as fostering a “social trust” in democratic institutions themselves (Flanagan, Stoppa, Syvertsen, & Stout, 2010), children and youth in urban centers may come to disregard traditional civic actions, such as voting, as irrelevant. In the words of one African-American eighth-grade student who participated in a study conducted by Beth Rubin (2007), “I don’t think I have to pledge to a flag to show honor for my country when the words that we say are not true” (p. 449).