Author: tlm6197

It is no secret that mental health has been talked about exponentially more recently than ever before, which is a very good thing. Many kids however do not get the mental health treatment that they need, up to 80%. Why are they not getting help? Well most times, they want someone to ask them what is wrong, and parents and teachers can often miss signs that something is wrong. Parents may believe it is ‘just a phase,’ while teachers may believe the student is simply not working hard or doesn’t care. Oftentimes, warning signs of mental health struggles show up in school: attendance could start to drop, grades slipping, and interactions among other students and teachers diminishing. Once again we have to ask the question of who’s responsibility does identifying mental health issues fall on: the parents, or teachers, or both?

“One in six U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year, and half of all mental health conditions begin by age 14.” These conditions start extremely early on, often at the end of middle school and into high school. There are warning signs, but again these can be cast aside. Let’s look at the teacher’s side of the issue.

Teachers quite simply already have their hands full. Many do already have a mentor relationship with particular students, and this makes it difficult to have personal conversations with each and every kid they have. Teachers can often have a lack of resources in this area. The can talk to a child and identify a problem, but in reality most teachers have no training to do this and do not know the student as well as say their parents would. Should teachers even get involved then? But then its also important that most of the warning signs do happen at school and are fairly easy to find if someone is looking for them. I think teachers responsibility should be to contact the parents if something seems off, and if they feel comfortable enough quietly ask the student to stay after class and ask them if anything is wrong. I do not think it is the average teacher’s responsibility beyond this point however.

Schools do already have counselors that kids can go to for this, but a stigma around them do exist. Despite this, nearly the same amount of kids get help from school resources that get help from professionals outside of schools. Reducing the stigma around school counselors and getting help is definitely happening, but has a long way to go. Maybe a regular check in that is not about scheduling classes should be implemented.

Parents are probably the most obvious role that should take place in this. Parents know their children better than anyone else, and need to take drastic mood or behavior swings seriously, and regularly ask their child how they are doing in a calm and focused setting. Families should be the first to spot the problem, as long as they know what to look for.

This issue is not easy or simple, but with more awareness for both parents and teachers, many kids will be able to get proper treatment when they need it most.

I think one of the more interesting and less controversial topics in education is discipline. There are really two questions at play here: one, to what extent should teachers be expected to discipline and raise your kid, and two, what kind of disciplinary measures should be used.

Looking at the first question, there is a few perspectives that exist. One, teachers should not be forced or expected to raise our kids. They are here to teach them, and simply are not paid enough to teach children how to behave. That should be the parents job, to ensure that their children are well-behaved so that the teacher can then do their job and teach the kids without too many interruptions or disruptions. Now the reasons that parents are sometimes lacking in this field is a whole ‘nother issue, but that is the first perspective. The opposite to that would then be that of course teachers should be disciplining our kids. They have them for 7-8 hours a day, maybe even more, which is arguable more time then their parents get with them a day. Also, school is a major place where socialization happens, and where kids get to regularly interact with others. Issues are going to come up that simply wouldn’t happen at a home setting, which is where teachers are expected to step in. The middle ground perspective looks something like teachers should call out bad behavior, or at least bring it to the attention of the kids parents, but the teacher should only interfere as much as needed to ensure a proper learning environment and that the parents know.

So then the second question, what disciplinary measures should be used? Well on the extreme end of punishments we have suspension and expulsion, which honestly have never made too much sense to me. We punish kids who misbehave in school by taking them out of school? It only limits their education further, makes them upset at the system, and probably makes them happy because of course they don’t want to be in school. Some kids might even brag about getting suspended. And there is also the issue that kids who getting suspended or expelled are more likely to get involved in the juvenile justice system. Many people are now arguing for negative forms of punishment by extremely limited, and rather use methods of counseling and restorative justice practices.

How our kids are disciplined in school is a major concern that every parent should have a say in. Ultimately, I believe it falls more on the parent than the teacher, and that a lot of parents are parenting wrong these days, but that is an issue of technology, money shortages, and much more. There is no simple fix, but we need to start having these conversations.

One of the current most controversial topics, especially last presidential election cycle, is how should America handle the large amount of college debt many students find themselves. The average student loan debt per borrower is $38,792, which is clearly a lot of money. But whose fault does this rest on: students, their parents, the government, the colleges? How could we even fix this problem: the government paying for portions of student debt, completely free college tuition, better interest programs? There are a lot of questions around this topic, and no easy answer. My goal is to outline the positives and negatives of the most radical approach being the government paying for student’s ‘free’ tuition.

The first topic is the debt students exist in. Obviously making college tuition free would greatly reduce this debt. It would allow thousands of students who cannot afford to go to college currently have the opportunity to receive higher education. The opposite side of this coin is that tuition free college does not simply make college completely free. Tuition costs only account for 39.5% of average total college costs. This means students would still more than likely have debt from college, even if it is significantly cheaper.

Of course the money to pay for free tuition does not come out of nowhere; it comes out of taxpayers pockets. Bernie Sander’s free college program(again not free college free tuition) would cost $47 billion per year, which would either mean an increase in taxes or money be diverted from other areas. Another argument is why should people who pursue non-college education jobs(anything from restaurant workers to the trades) pay for others to go to college, when college is really a place that allows someone to get higher paying jobs? In other words, the workers that make less initially would help pay for other people to get into higher paying jobs. It may seem unfair to many if that was the case. But then again, paying off college tuition has yielded financial benefits before. GI Bill participants ended up generated billions of extra dollars and the government got an eventual return of $6.90 for every dollar spent giving veterans college access.

One final point to mention is that there is the potential that many students would go to college for a year with the wrong intentions, waste tax payers’ dollars, and then drop out. And that is not a baseless claim either; “Under California’s community college fee waiver program, over 50% of the state’s community college students attended for free (before a 2017 program change), but only 6% of all California community college students completed a career technical program and fewer than 10% completed a two-year degree in six years.”

The goal of this was to list out the pros and cons and then allow ourselves to come to a decision for ourselves. Could the government paying off college tuition result in freeing students and giving more opportunities, or would it ultimately not even solve the issue and result in money being wasted?

It is no secret that not all schools are equal. I’m sure we can all remember comparing our elementary, middle, and high schools against each other. The size and quality of the school building, the sports programs, the size of the stadium, and much more. We probably did not directly compare the quality of our teachers as much, unless complaining about a particularly bad one, but quality teachers are also a huge factor that varies from school to school. And what do all of these different issues stem from? The funding each school receives. And of course, schools in wealthier areas get more funding, resulting in a better education experience for their kids. Most people know this, but how bad is this problem really, and what can be done to resolve it?

Two years ago it was reported by Technorati that 22% of kids fall under the poverty line, which is defined as a family of four living on under $23,050 or lower. 22% is a scary number, and it is only estimated to climb. “American Graduate also cites a report from the Southern Education Foundation, which shows in 17 states across the U.S., low-income students now comprise the majority of public school students in those states” (Chen, G. (2021, December 21). 10 major challenges facing public schools. Public School Review. Retrieved February 18, 2022, from https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/10-major-challenges-facing-public-schools.)

Poverty also affects the amount of food and sleep these children receive, how often they are on time, the resources they can access outside of school, extracurriculars they can participate in, and their chances of dropping out. And these problems are not the result of teachers, administrators, or government not trying. It seems that there is just not enough resources to make it an equal experience for all.

Another major facet to education is classroom size, and I would argue it makes the poverty factor exponentially worse. Georgia had to remove classroom size limits 3 years ago, despite budget cuts being made at the same time. South Carolina and Virginia are also suffering similar problems. We can see that as funding is being cut, the amount of kids per classroom is only increasing. There is less money and more kids, making the problem much worse. Classes of 15-17 are optimal, but many are now forced to exceed 30, resulting in less attention to each kid.

How can these issues be addressed? Well I’m afraid there really is not a simple answer. State and federal government is strained for money, especially post-Covid, and education issues are often not important on a national scale. I think for any real change to happen, it would have to start on the federal level, or at the very least a popular president bringing them to light. Former attempts to fix the education system by presidents, such as Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act are viewed as detrimental, or Obama’s attempts were insignificant. A major fight for education would have to take place for real change to be seen.

My stance/opinion on standardized tests is one that is constantly fluctuating. Over the past few years they have come under fire for being biased or unfair, and at first that notion seemed ridiculous to me. How can a standardized test, be biased at all. The different forms of the test are random, but it is basically the same test around the country, on very general fields of study that everyone goes through. How could it possibly be biased or even unfair?

The pandemic shut down a lot of ACT and SAT testing capabilities over the past couple years, resulting in colleges having to consider students that have not been able to take the test. Most became test-optional, meaning that you could still submit a standardized test if you wanted to, but it would not necessarily hurt you if you did not. We don’t really have a way to know if that is completely truthful, but it seems most stuck to their word on that. Many top end schools did not do this, but the vast majority of colleges in America did, which has in turn made standardized tests as a whole a lot less crucial in the college decision process.

This is good news for those opposed to standardized tests, but let’s dive into why they are getting a bad reputation. Research has shown that the scores students get on these tests have troubling correlation to family income, gender, race, and ethnicity. This is mostly the result that students in higher income areas have access to more education materials than other students do, resulting in their scores increasing. Also, since tests cost significant money to take, those in higher income families can take the test more than once, also improving their odds.

Does this mean that the tests themselves are necessarily unfair? No not really. But does it mean that the nature of how students prepare for these tests and the resources they have access to are unfair? Definitely. So the question then becomes, is there any way to get around these barriers. Will standardized testing ever be as important as it once was, or is that going to fade and then disappear forever.

If standardized tests were ever able to come back, I think a few crucial changes would have to be made. For one, make the tests themselves free. They should be provided by the students school, and should be online so that paper cost is not a money factor. Make the limit a student can take each test a max of 3 times, with their highest being counted and the other 2 completely ignored. Also, more practice tests would have to be created. I think if all of these were successfully implemented, the merit of standardized tests would return, because there is benefits to such tests. The benefit meant to be that since different schools have different teachers and quite frankly, different teaching capabilities and class difficulties, standardized tests are a way to compare every student across the world regardless of their pre-collegiate schooling.

I would argue that these test should not go away completely, but some essential changes are definitely in order.

One of the most common criticisms of the pre college education is that it has not changed for decades. Despite these recent times having the most indication and changes ever, schools appear to have been stagnant. Or at least this was the most common criticism pre-Covid. This pandemic has forced massive changes to the education system to be made, but do these changes actually address some serious fundamental issues, or are they just a change of face?

When saying that the classrooms look the same, what does that mean exactly. Well, a single teacher educated a class of around 20 students. The teacher has to fit a certain amount of information in each day, and they have to try and move at a pace equal to the average or close to majority of their students. Students go from class to class by a bell, forced to take mainly the same classes(last two years of high school has more variation), with the same amount of time set for each class. More problems can be said, but these are the most notable, at least in my opinion.

So why are these fundamental issues like I’ve said? Well frankly, moving all students along the same curriculum simply is not effective and does not work. All students learn information at different paces, based on the subject or even individual lessons. Conforming all students to learn at the same speed both limits some students and moves too fast for others. It results in all students being held back in some way. A system where students can learn at their own pace, while still being motivated, would be ideal.

This system also does not take into account the different fields students are interested in. Now granted, all students need a fundamental level of education, but we should also have specialized options available more early and often as well.