February 27, 2008

High School Students Tell the Truth About Their Schools

Posted by Aaron Tang at 4:10PM

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A California teacher asks his students, "Why should I care?" as a group of boys walk out of his room to cut class.

A high school psychology teacher hands out textbooks ... and then asks her students to color gingerbread men for a grade. When some of the students ask the teacher to teach them more information, the teacher responds by challenging her students to transfer out of her psychology class if they don't think they're learning anything.

These are just two of many tough, honest stories being shared by students across the state of California through a project called Right to Learn, which is being run through the terrific youth website YouthNoise.com. As a judge for a contest they recently held to pick the five best stories submitted by students so far, I was deeply impressed by the degree to which young people care about their schools, and the degree to which they realize that our nation's leaders are all-too-often cheating them out of the high quality education they deserve.

As the co-director of an organization that has engaged over 20,000 youth in an effort to call attention to the problems in our nation's schools, I of course believe in the power of young people to effect change on the problems facing our schools. It is a simple theory of change, really. Our schools suffer from a lack of quality educators, a culture of failure, insufficient resources in many cases, and a dearth of tough, common sense policies to bring about the change we need. And the only way to fix these problems is to call for a sea change of public pressure on politicians to do better.

Make no mistake: the victories that the American people have won to change the direction of our society in the past century have all benefitted from youth leadership. The Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, women's movement and more have all had critical youth elements. Student sit-ins and protests have won victories from East Los Angeles to St. Louis to Boston, on a wide range of issues. I've embedded a video below of a student sit-in that took place in St. Louis just last year.

The challenge facing youth activists who aim to attract public and political will to improve our schools is that there has yet to be a smoking gun image that pushes the movement over the top. For instance, when video footage of Bull Connor sending attack dogs and fire hoses against peaceful protestors in Birmingham made it to TV sets across the country, the Civil Rights Movement took flight. But what is the parallel image in our schools? Crumbling buildings and inept teachers are the norm, but they do not appear to be enough to spark mass action. It may not be until such an image is created and disseminated when youth and other advocates experience the progress they seek.