“It's the Worst Place to Live”: Urban Youth and the Challenge of School-Based Civic Learning

One of the primary aims of education in the United States is to prepare youth to contribute to civic life in a democracy. Urban youth have daily school and community experiences with poverty, violence, and injustice that complicate their relationship with civic life. In this article the authors explore the ramifications of these experiences for youth civic identity development and consider how new understandings of the civic learning and identity development of urban adolescents might be used to rejuvenate civic education practices and, by extension, the civic mission of schooling.