Yearning to learn: youth voices from restriction states, 2023

Purpose Recently, the nation has seen intensive adult efforts to regulate and limit race- and LGBTQ-related student learning, discussion, and support in US schools, calling such education harmful to youth. This study aims to investigate: What do youth say themselves? The authors delve here into six youth interviews from five states with new, explicitly restrictive state legislation and policy. The authors put youths’ voices describing education they found helpful directly in conversation with their states’ policies, which targeted related education as harmful. Design/methodology/approach In spring 2023, researchers invited interviews from all recent participants in a national youth “anti-hate” program who had offered emails for research participation (29 students), interviewed all willing students (10) and selected those (6) from “restriction states” – states with recently passed or pending legislation and state policy to restrict race- and/or sexual orientation and gender identity-related learning and support. The final total included two youth interviews from Florida, one from Tennessee, one from Texas, one from Montana and one from Missouri. The interview respondents were high school students, with one middle schooler; four were white, one also Latinx/Hispanic and one Black. Four of the six described themselves as queer or LGBTQ. Findings While youth respondents were drawn from an “anti-hate” program that their states’ politicians might caricature as “woke,” youth described extremely basic learning and support they wanted in school – desired talk about experiences, facts, history and diverse perspectives. Youth also indicated how already minimal such support would be limited or was being limited further by state and local adult efforts to restrict school talk. That is, state and related local restriction pressure threatened to further limit youths’ already-limited opportunities to experience inclusion, critical thinking and belonging – opportunities that youth wanted increased in schools and that researchers call for increasing as well. The authors came to view restriction efforts as attempting to limit students’ school access to the very conversation realms and learning supports they craved. Research limitations/implications The authors leverage Angela Valenzuela’s concept of “subtractive schooling” (1999) to reference how today’s restriction efforts pressure and essentially demand that schools subtract access to extremely basic learning and belonging efforts desired by some youth – and by researchers. The authors conclude by asking how schools today can be supported to improve on such work in schools, not subtract it. Future research needs to explore youth perspectives on how restriction efforts are playing out in US states and localities. Originality/value With the quickly changing educational context and political climate, there has not been enough research devoted to the experiences of students from restriction contexts. It is important to centralize the voices of students and their experiences in the midst of restriction policies.