Education can only truly be said to be successful it if produces citizens that can create a successful civil society. Learning empathy and respect for others is essential for citizens who will be concerned for what is just and fair in society. For schools this means creating an environment where everyone feels accepted and respected. Unfortunately, for many students school is not a place where they feel accepted or appreciated (or even safe). In many schools a lot of the emotionally toxic social environment that a lot of kids experience is under the radar of teachers and staff. Although many kids do enjoy the social interactions at school, a lot more struggle because of cliques, disrespect, and bullying. Whether resulting in low self-esteem and low achievement or aggression and violence, the formative social experiences at schools can ripple outwards to affect the rest of society. In order to be a less divided and polarized society, our schools need to fundamentally address the large number of students who are not feeling a part of school socially.
One step that would go a long way towards addressing this issue is to have peer mentors. If students in the 11th and 12th grades would volunteer to organize clubs for kids in the middle school, this would allow kids in the middle school to establish a relationship with caring, older students who can spend time with them, mentor them emotionally and socially, and teach them different skills and activities relevant to different hobbies. This could be organized through the high school student government to create student clubs that would be appealing to kids in junior high school. By informally interacting with older students, the junior high students would be able to develop relationships that would allow them to share their emotions and the issues they are facing. This would also help to get students off of devices and into activities that could be fun, rewarding, and would help them connect to other people. High schools could count this as a service project that could help towards college admissions.
Another issue that needs to be addressed is civic engagement. Too many students are graduating from high school with very little knowledge of the fundamentals of U.S. history and political processes. As they start college many students are not aware of how governmental policies are being created, even the policies that directly impact them. They also lack an awareness of how they could be a part of the solution. By joining the American Association of Students, college students can participate directly in the political process by meeting with legislatures to address educational reform issue and by educating, organizing, and mobilizing their peers to be a force for social change.
A final issue that needs to be addressed to create citizens who can create a just and fair society is greater political literacy. Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have been moving away from requiring political science 101 and U.S. history (first and second semesters) as graduation requirements. These classes need to be required. Many of the current political problems facing our nation are due to the fact that there is a decreasing political literacy and civic engagement. We need to ensure that current and future generations of college graduates will not be politically ignorant or lack any real deep understanding of our history as a society. We need to make certain that current and future generations will not suffer from cultural amnesia. Cultural amnesia occurs when cultural knowledge is forgotten, and then over time even the memory of what has been forgotten is no longer known. The daily sturm and drang of political drama incites passionate hysteria and drowns out thoughtful reflection. As a society we need citizens who can think critically about the real consequences of the policies and laws being enacted. Our civic prosperity and future survival depends on schools, colleges, and universities creating citizen thinkers who are up to the challenges of governing a free and democratic society.