Urban Education and Segregation: The Responses from Young People
Source: European Educational Research Journal, Volume 11, No. 1, 2012, pages 45-57.
The author discusses schooling in the neighbourhoods typically associated with problems and challenges, in order to explore young people’s responses to their schooling and social positions.
Such responses include individual acts, such as rejecting further schooling or dismissing the local school in favour of prestigious ones, as well as the development of shared understandings and collective formations.
The paper focuses in particular on young people’s responses through aesthetic practices, informal education and public political actions.
Although research suggests that youths in poor areas are increasingly individualised and shows that schools provide them with little help to understand and act upon their circumstances in school, the analyses here also bring to light young people’s rather strong belief in collective actions; students’ formations of resistance groups and political knowledge appear as crucial resources, and, although scarce, teacher support and teaching about political actions appear as important.