The month of June is graduation season for high schools. The parents of these newly minted young adults are usually happy that twelve years of education (not to mention day care and pre-k) is over. Their sons and daughters likely have driver licenses and a more cemented sense of self, ready to take on secondary studies at college or specialty trade schools away from the home environment.
The big question is how much today’s graduates really know. Some say that today’s teenagers are more educated in deception than decimals. They leave senior year carrying a phone filled with meaningless babble and a mind still devoid of basic knowledge. Gone are the basics of home economics and auto shop, replaced by test-centric instruction on how to answer mandated examinations designed to actually measure student knowledge.
Nine out of ten students pass the time engaged in their cell phones, according to recent studies. Also, less than 20% of teens admit to reading books, choosing social media instead. Cursive writing is becoming lost in the maze of other more exciting (and less useful) courses. Job applicants do not come into the workforce with a signature; in fact, many have had no need to use a writing implement in years and don’t know how to write by hand.
Social media, in the meantime, has become a wasteland of poor grammar, spelling and punctuation, as well as a dumping ground for questions which should have been answered over twelve years of learning. We shake our heads every time somebody of a certain younger age brings up flat earth theory or a historical event which they believe didn’t truly happen.
These are the future of our world, charged with bringing up the next generations and caring for the older ones that are dying out, such as the World War II veterans who are leaving us faster each day as they age into their late 90s.
Why bring up paragraph after paragraph of doom and gloom? Because it is a warning that, particularly in the past decade, we have failed our children. We need to make the unpopular decision and not relegate schoolwork to test prep, and instead put experienced instructors with specialist credentials in front of the classroom to prepare these generations for fixing what is wrong and righting what has gone askew.
They can’t do that if they can’t read their own diploma.
Teachers also need support from their boards of education, and funding to place resources in their hands. Parents must work in cooperation with the faculty, rather than find reasons to thwart their efforts.
Life is like that. You must sometimes take the way that people don’t like but need to endure for the sake of the future and our collective good.
How we start that or get those who have already been affected up to speed would be difficult, but our colleges may be able to help repair the rips in the educational fabric by giving incoming classes some mandatory refresher courses which require work that is witnessed in real time and not produced with AI or other cheating resources.
Good luck with it, class of 2024.
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