Youth, Education, and Marginality: Local and Global Expressions

Introduction: Living Intersections of Marginality

2 introduction This book jumps off from, and into, these nuances through detailed empirical, theoretical, artistic, practical, and policy discussions of what could be next for marginalized youth in public education. And it includes the artistic experience and rendering about marginalization by some talented young people. Young people and the social process of marginalization are not essential or simple categories. We avoid treating all youth the same or knowing what marginality is or what it means to them. We have invoked an imagination that allows the process of viewing late modernity to be vast, abundant, complex, and strange, and we present work that witnesses how young people understand and negotiate its margins in public education. The social complexity of these experiences and life stories and the ways in which schools respond to them is the focus of this book. It has been organized to begin and end with the perspectives and voices of young people in order to provide a glimpse into this society that they inhabit. In particular, they are addressing the experiences of being on the outside, traversing liminal spaces, being on the margins, and being made marginal and pushed to the boundaries from which it is difficult to learn, to be taken seriously, included, or heard. They wince from there and offer critiques that educators and policy makers need to hear. We do not agree that “giving voice” is entirely possible as many do not hear or take to heart what is heard. The book is a moment of making space. The contributors work at the intersections of experiences of social marginalization as it plays out in public education . As a group of scholars, young people, educators, and policy-makers, they make fresh contributions about educational responses to young people struggling to negotiate the identity borders of race, social class, poverty, cultural status, mental health challenges, sexualities, linguistic or literacy challenges, familial chaos, and/or being a newcomer to Canada. The authors attempt to elucidate the abundant folds of experience of these young people and their meanings for educational practice and policy. They also take seriously the narratives, biographies , and life stories that illuminate intersections of identity, experience, and the social worlds of youth. In May 2009, many of us had the fortune to assemble at one of Bruce Ferguson’s collaborative research symposia at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. I was thrilled to host the symposium Marginalized Youth in Contemporary Educational Contexts, the fifth in a series of seven such events (http://www.chsrgevents.ca/default.aspx). Many contributors to this book took part in this dialogue, and others form an emerging network, some of whom contributed in 2011 to a special issue of Education Canada on marginalized youth. This conversation has now landed momentarily in this book. The book begins and ends with the artistic renderings of young people , and you will find visual art from young people between and among the 3 Living Intersections of Marginality chapters. Look for the visual works of Tamir Holder (Finding Hope), Sarah Laurin (Hunger), Elliott Tilleczek (On the Coast 2, Barbed Wire), Angel Ho (The Blue Bliss), Anwesha Sen (Tears and Fears), Zera Koutchieva (Grey Matters), Kira Duff (Marginalized Youth), Bria Dobson (The Blue Brain Kid), and Andrea Bunnie (Pieces of Me). It opens with poetry and prose by youth contributors Farrah Chanda Aslam, Tammy Lou, Selina Peters, and Sabnam Mahmuda, who demonstrate the power of art in this conversation. The book closes with poetry and prose that looks towards reflection and suggestion by Lishai Peel, Maryam Sharif-Razi, Mallory Goss, and Alycia Fry. The individual contributions are a gift and the collective contributions provide a dizzying and illuminating effect. Interpretation is left up to you but be prepared for an interior journey. Chapter 1 follows with Kate Tilleczek and Karima Kinlock’s examination of the possibilities and promises of “humanities-infused praxis” with and for young people on the margins. They map out the ways in which the art of the young people in this book has been gathered and interpreted. They open with further youth experiences that set the stage for a discussion on how the humanities and social sciences are being used as a means to better understand and communicate the marginalization of youth. They provide some insight as to how various art media are being used by the community to facilitate conversations of youth life experiences and what it means...