Power, Propaganda and Social Imagination

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It's easy to see the abuse of power and propaganda in Communist China or Nazi Germany, but what about in the United States every country uses propaganda.

Teaching about power is the fundamental aspect of teaching for critical literacy: who has power and who is denied it; how is power used and how is it abused. Young adult fiction can be a powerful way to teach for critical literacy (Alsup, 2003; Bean & Moni, 2003; Johnson & Freedman, 2005). Social responsibility not only requires an understanding of the abuse of power but also commands the consciousness to see it and the ethical commitment to stop it.

In Daniel Half Human (Chotjewitz, 2005), two 15-year-old German boys are enamored with Hitler until one of them is told his mother is Jewish.

The Loud Silence of Francine Green (Cushman, 2006) involves two girls—one politically outspoken and the other silent—who become best friends during the "red scare" of McCarthyism. Anderson's (2002) Feed is set in the future when people have microchips implanted in their brains so they receive media—the "feed"— literally into their heads.

In Little Brother (Doctorow, 2008), 17-year-old Marcus—who is a computer and Internet expert—is imprisoned and tortured by U.S. Homeland Security following a terrorist attack.

Greene (1995) defined "social imagination" as "the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, and in our schools" (p. 5). Teaching for social imagination is helping students to question the world we have and envision a better world we could have. Dystopian novels offer unique opportunities to teach these habits of mind.

Although these stories are set in the future—often post apocalyptic—thematically they are really about the present. The Hungry City quartet of books begins with Mortal Engines (Reeve, 2001) when, in the distant future, entire cities practice "Municipal Darwinism"—where they roam the land like colossal tractors, eating other cities.

In the popular Uglies (Westerfeld, 2005), teenagers get surgery when they turn 16 to transform them from an "ugly" into a "pretty," but when 15-year-old Tally meets Shay she sees the ugly side of being "pretty." The City of Ember (DuPrau, 2003) takes place in a dying city underground that no longer knows there is an above ground world, but two characters, Leena and Dune, believe there is a way out of Ember.

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