Children Talk to Charles Dickens about Their Own “Hard Times”

Abstract

The focus of this research narrative is children's perceptions of social class and their experiences of poverty as a social identity. Participatory action research that includes narrative reflection is demonstrated for its capacity and potential as a source of agency that may contribute to youths' academic, social, and political emancipation. In this research we analyze perceptions and attitudes about social class as these perceptions and attitudes are expressed by a group of children who are economically poor and who reside in an urban area in the Pacific Northwest. Our purpose has been to engage our students in a transformative educational process, with the further intention of deepening students' understandings of their own power to act in the world, or to “write their own futures” This readers' theater narrative has been scripted from personal, cultural texts that the co-authors (Susan and Morgan) selected from young people's writing in response to reading Charles Dickens' Hard Times and other period literature. The research takes place in the context of the At Home At School (AHAS) program at Washington State University Vancouver, directed by Susan Finley and where Morgan Parker is an undergraduate research assistant.