Youth Lens - Deconstructing the "Young Adult" in YA

 

I am all about the idea of deconstructing “the adolescent” via Youth Lens as a pathway into theoretical lenses for kids. I hadn’t thought a lot about how adolescence is a social construct in the same way as race or gender, but of course it  makes perfect sense AND it’s a lens that kids will have actual skin in the game to want to unlock. 

I know for a fact that the deficit lens of adolescence seeps into the consciousness of our own kids. My 6th graders have made comments about their older teen siblings along the lines of “oh yeah she/he is such a teenager, it’s so annoying.” In our parent teacher conferences, parents bring up the dreaded specter of looming teendom - “I think my child is beginning to act more adolescent” (cue the horror movie music). This deficit attitude towards teens is so ingrained, and unpacking how it is reinforced in their literature is an exciting suggestion. 

I think teaching kids about Youth Lens and then having them apply it to the media they consume would be super interesting. They watch a lot of tv shows and movies - How do these also fall into the tropes of age bias, peer orientation, hormonal teens, and coming of age, and what do the kids think about it? From there, it’s less of a leap into critical race and gender lenses to add further layers to analyze how characters are conceived and what deeper messages (good or bad) are hidden within texts. In a time where critical thinking is on the decline, I can see how this lens could reinvigorate some brain cells back into action. 

For the books I read (Firekeeper’s Daughter and the Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky), I think the protagonists are experiencing their own eye openings towards social constructs of the adolescent. Brett struggles with his eating disorder and directly confronts questions of gender norms. His friend Mallory has to open his eyes to the issue with his thinking, sharing a feminist lens with him. Daunis faces gender discrimination too, and her identity as a woman and a native woman at that is an essential piece of the narrative a reader should be tracking. I struggle a bit right now to come up with concrete examples of how the Youth Lens might apply for these characters - Maybe some of the side characters are shown as a deficit, but they do grow. I’d be curious to know what others think.