Marginalized youth in contemporary educational contexts: A tranquil invitation to a rebellious celebration

When any groups are systematically excluded from meaningful participation and achieve below their levels of competence, they become both "marginalized" in their current school environments and economically and socially disadvantaged over their lifetimes. For many young people, these intersecting marginalities come in the form of lowered expectations from those around them, schools which negate their cultural ways of knowing, stalled academic and social accomplishments, a hopeless sense of being on the outside of the educational journeys they had imagined for themselves, or even an inability to access a school. Our evaluations of current and future outcomes and expectations for these young people must be measured against what we know can be done as opposed to what we have been doing, and educators need to play a new role in helping build young people's capacity for reflexive action and helping them to become aware of the very real structural barriers that must be negotiated. (Contains 15 endnotes.)