Troubling a “Cultured Hell”: Empowering Adolescent Voices through Youth Participatory Action Research

The stuff our students want to talk about more and explore most is the heavy stuff. These adolescent youth long not only to talk about the heavy stuff, they want to research the issues that matter most to them, and they want to write about the socially constructed and politically loaded labels that they are forced to inhabit. They seek to understand—an understanding that is driven by a desire to actuate change. The burning question for us as educators: What are we so afraid of in letting them explore these topics?