Why Schools Cannot be Social Justice Incubators

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Many of the problems experienced in schools today is due to the social justice imperatives placed upon them. Schools in earlier times were strictly places of learning. There was no discussion of social issues or bending on the idea of merit over identity. Fast forward to current times and a plethora of mandated moves have muddied the waters on what is education and what is indoctrination.

Take the example of the story listed. Those who teach high school have most likely encountered a number of students who claim gender fluidity. This may or may not be with full knowledge of their parents. In one class there is a student who looks, acts and dresses as a girl, but the student's parent state they are male. In the same class are two girls who have shaved their heads, dress like boys and have to be reminded not to grope each other in class. It is very fashionable, especially among the groups that embrace animé to act out in public ways to express their individuality by dressing and acting like the opposite gender.

In terms of ethnicity, there is blissful ignorance that even within the defined by the Fed ethnic groups, there are divisions. My students from South Africa, Ghana and Haiti do not understand the angst of the BLM movement and tend to avoid the various step teams and other designated "black" groups in favor of NHS and various Asian groups. The Hispanic students whose parents are professionals don't hang out with the kids from the trailer park. The Korean kids don't hang out with the Vietnamese students. So rather than the modest list of divisions listed by the Fed, we have a puzzle of ethnic populations divided more by wealth than image. When you have the offspring of professional athletes who drive BMW's to school, I don't think they have much in common with kids whose single parent lives paycheck to paycheck in subsidized housing. And yet in all regards from college admission to discipline, the treatment is based far more on ethnicity than ability.

I am not sure where our public school system is going in coming years. Like the news media, it has allowed itself to become captive to a group of politicians far more interested in using the access to groom adherents than in actually educating the student population. This is why too often the state bureaucrats err on the side of making course less rigorous and allowing our kids to slide thanks to a slope of well meant, but misguided actions.  Years ago, when Texas mandates the Four by Four programs-where high school students would be required to take four core classes each year in order to graduate-I predicted that mandating all students take Calculus and Physics would result in watering down classes and/or the creation of innocuous easy classes because much of the student population would never graduate.

Because we have chosen to water down serious courses, we have students in remedial courses at major colleges. This should NEVER happen. I guarantee it doesn't happen in China, Russia or India. Remedial classes should be reserved for community and junior college consumption. Instead it is offered at major colleges because our students are simply not prepared for the independence and rigors of college. There are ways to break this cycle. Schools could take away screens and start insisting students read books and study from books. Schools could ban calculators until high school, requiring students to develop the logical constructs that math offers. Schools could stop shoving political dogma as fact down the throats of kids not old enough to vote.....but then again we get to the cycle wherein politicians get technology for schools and then pretend they are making things better.

In the last five years I have seen the impact of personal technology on the classroom. It's not good. Our kids are distracted and learning less than they learned a decade earlier. I have tried to use the same syllabus since 2001, improving the lessons as I go. This year my students did three fewer projects than just five years ago. I have tried pushing and pulling them across the finish line. They have no concept of deadlines or of requirements. Often on essays, they simply throw everything on the page, just hoping it answers the stated question. This is in my AP class. These our are best and brightest students. I just don't know that they can function as adult without some serious intervention going on.