Abstract
This paper discusses the ways in which high school students - primarily African-Americans, Africans and whites - demonstrate their civic knowledge, communitarian values, and independent decision-making skills in the course of their political activism in Philadelphia. This study demonstrates that as high school students engage with outsiders such as parent coalition groups, the media and legislators they effectively negotiate their varying positions with little intervention from adults. Much of the literature which discusses urban youth has focused on examining deviant behaviour among young people. There has been little attention given to cases where young people, particularly urban youth, may exhibit civic responsibility and communitarian ideologies. This study examines the ways in which high school students display such knowledge. Finally, the paper discusses reasons for students' civic participation. Data are based on twenty interviews and participant observation of African American, African, and white students who were in the course of campaigning against the privatization of Philadelphia public schools at the time of my field work.