For everyone in the large ballroom, adolescence was in the past. For some, very far in the past. And yet their views of democracy were likely formed during those teenage years. "Who am I, who are we, who defines our history: Educating for democracy and social justice" presented as a workshop in partnership with the Global Pathfinders Summit and the Curry School of Education, explored how adolescence itself affects democracy.
The teenage brain is sticky, full of emotional glue that holds onto the profound moments that shape our lives, especially the concept of justice. In those critical years, we begin to question norms and the status quo, and we define ourselves within that context. Upon that foundation, we build our understanding of the social order and democracy.
“The more that we learn about the science of adolescence, the more we understand [that] the teenage years are critical for shaping democratic practice and concern for social justice over a lifetime,” said Nancy l. Deutsch, professor at UVA’s Curry School of Education and director of Youth-Nex: The UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development.
Deutch remembered her own nascent engagement with political issues. “It is during the teenage years that adolescents, teenagers, are thinking about who am I? And also who am I in the world?”
To illustrate the creation of identity, the Curry team handed out a picture of a tree. The leaves symbolized surface culture and raised questions such as where do you live?; what is your family educational history? The trunk of the tree represented shallow culture. What did respect and disrespect look like? What earned you praise? And the roots alluded to deep culture, questions such as what constitutes a family?; how does your community understand justice?
Everyone in the audience filled out their own tree and shared the results with those around them. They looked for the things they had in common, major differences, and big surprises. The tables were filled by people with widely divergent backgrounds, including 100 emerging leaders from around the globe along with those attending PrezFest. The conversations were surprising, often revealing major similarities despite the high degree of national and cultural diversity.
“Who you are interacts with histories and how we make sense of it: Where we come from; who we are; what we believe in,” said Stephanie van Hover, chair of Curry's Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education.“In critical history you have to recognize our identity, our 'positionality,' as we are interacting with difficult concepts about the past and how that influences the present."
The Curry School currently has a project aimed at capturing critical histories called Teachers in the Movement. It is an oral history project aimed at capturing the stories of teachers who participated in the civil rights movement, a group that many historians had initially argued played no role in the movement.
“We conceptualize critical history as history that, one, illuminates the voices and perspectives of historically oppressed people and encourages us to see the world from perspectives of the oppressed. It offers a top up rather than a top down view of history,” said former social studies teacher Derrick Alridge, director of Curry's Center for Race and Public Education in the South.
“We recognize that history is about interpretation. Critical History deconstructs the master narratives of history that often present truncated and simplified versions of history. And those histories simply don’t tell the whole story.”
The groups were then given questions to answer about the events that shaped their young lives. Around one table, a coffee shop owner from Guyana remembered political riots and uprisings in her small Island nation. The 2004 UVA graduate born in Ghana and raised in Alexandria remembered the beating of Rodney King. Another remembered Vietnam War protests while watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
“So all of this means that the experiences and opportunities that we offer adolescents for engaging in complex moral reasoning, identity exploration, critical history, critical questioning of history and democratic practice during their youth will form the foundation of their identity that they will carry into adulthood. And that shapes future democratic participation,” Deutsch concluded before releasing the group into the warm spring air.
