I Guess This Is Activism?: Youth, Political Education, and Free-Market Common Sense

How neoliberal capitalism and pedagogical deideologization constrain the radical possibilities of youth activismIn I Guess This Is Activism?Kevin L. Clay presents an eye-opening account of his experience with Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as an Upward Bound educator.Grounded in Paulo Freire's tradition of critical pedagogy, YPAR has been championed by community-based educators and scholars in the United States as an approach for supporting critical consciousness development and social change with working-class Black and Latino youth.Clay, however, questions whether YPAR can effectively prepare youths to subvert the systems reproducing their material conditions under neoliberal capitalism.Exposing the political and pedagogical limits of YPAR's progressive education model, he reveals how omnipresent neoliberalism undermines youths' radical potential when political education is not prioritized in youth activism. I Guess This Is Activism? engages Black radical thinkers, includ