Not Short and Sweet: A Conversation with Students of America (II)
Students from across the United States discuss the election, empathy and personal learning in schools
On November 17th Student Voice held an event for International Students Day. We convened a group of students from across the United States for a roundtable discussion and movement planning session in Washington, D.C. at Facebook’s office. The roundtable was recorded and streamed via Facebook live. The conversation below is the second in a series. Students discuss what they notice about school that adults do not.
Andrew B: You know this conversation will be fascinating because of just how many different backgrounds you all come from. I think that will will come out in some of the other topics and questions we discuss today… What can you tell me about your school that the adults in your life, your parents, teachers, school administrators, aren’t aware of?
Madison: Intolerance. I mentioned my school is fairly conservative and whenever there is a student who doesn’t look or think like everyone else they react in a harsh way a lot of times. I don’t think the administration realizes that or cares..
Andrew B: What do you mean by harsh?
Madison: They… name-calling… For example this happened just yesterday, we have only one muslim student, that just tells you how “diverse” we are. She is the sweetest person I’ve ever met. She posted something on social media about someone saying something about her country, she’s from Saudi-Arabia. I asked her what they said. She said they were trash talking her country and she was really upset about it. They hear about it on TV. The administration thinks we have pretty good school climate but we don’t.
Andrew B: Can anyone else echo bullying, harassment?
Macy: I think its always been there since the beginning of schools. There are always going to be children who are mean to each other kids or mean to adults or rude to each other in general. As much as we try to say “stop bullying”, there’s so many social movements to tell us this isn’t good. I think, well when kids are in elementary school it was a BIG no, never be mean to each other but as we get older they aren’t paying attention to us as much. They aren’t correcting our character. We spend so much time if [you] are being mean its intolerable. I believe now as we are moving forward after the election, its been put on the back burner. Especially now if we’re experiencing hate, we shouldn’t be living in a country where kids are afraid to go to school. Everyone has to go to school, no one should be afraid to.
Andrew B: A question that your comment brings up is, what role should students be playing in policing each other rather than depending on adults to do that?
Megan: Well I think that at my school there is definitely an attitude of boys will be boys, kids will be kids, that you will grow out of the intolerance. I think at the end of the day that the attitude is that anything that is different is wrong. So anybody who moves in from a different state or background is automatically bad and that has been brought out by the election. I think its up to students to say “no thats not okay” but its hard because no one wants to be that person, who’s then called different, because they stand up for every one else. It’s hard.
Andrew B: More things you know about your schools, y’all spend 35 hours a week there for 13 years.
Zoe: So in our school, our diversity is a bit lacking, but I think something that happens is homophobia. It mostly the boys saying “no homo”. I feel like the teachers don’t hear it or they think they’re joking. Its crazy stuff they call gay like a hat or something, its not tolerable. I think that believing in that sort of thing sort of takes away from our ability to be one organism and work as a team. I believe everyone being divide because they are so homophobic is kind of well I don’t understand it.
Andrew B: Well Washington DC is a pretty diverse place.
Zoe: Yeah and know to be liberal. Our students, well many are African American and I think there is a large homophobic community within the African American community. That seems to play in to and it effects our school.
Andrew F: At my school one of the biggest problems is mental health and its commonly not addressed. One of my best friends, she shows the symptoms of bi-polar disorder but she hasn’t gone to a therapist or been diagnosed and you don’t always know how to tell that person they need help. Our school just recently acquired a therapist/psychologist at our school and this is the first time I’ve ever had access to a therapist in my 13 years of going to school. Even though it’s my senior year, it’s been great access but if it had been there sooner it would have helped a lot of students because we’ve been going to school so long without it. Its important in a district like mine with 215,000 students, it can be hard to get to so many students but I think the biggest thing is [people] don’t recognize how others a feeling, a lot of the time that reflects how someone is doing in school.
Andrew B: What I’m hearing from you, from everyone, is that there is an overall lack of empathy in schools today. Quick show of hands, how many folks have a mental health professional that they have access to in their school?… about half? I mean thats something thats very important. I mean mental health effects a lot of folks and most of the time it’s not immediately visible so figuring out how we can support students who are dealing with that is a very important topic. Anything else on things that the adults in your school aren’t aware of?
Chelsea: To bring back what she was saying about the homophobia, I got into a harsh argument with a student because he was calling one of my good friends gay. He was saying “you shouldn’t be doing that kind of stuff”. I was like “you shouldn’t be judging him, that’s not even his sexuality, he’s bi”. He responded “No he’s straight up gay, he keeps doing gay stuff. There’s only two sexualities — gay or straight — “. I told him there were a lot more. There was a big controversy. The teachers are aware of it but they aren’t reaching out. On mental health: I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I told one of my friends about it and she started making fun of me. We recently got a therapist at the school and she’s been helping me out a lot.
Andrew B: And I would say one of the biggest, scariest things about mental illness is the number of people who do not get help because of the stigma associated with it. They’re afraid their classmates are going to do exactly what your friend did and make fun of them. We have to figure out a way to push back against that guys, its so important.
Daniella: To comment more about the stigma around mental health, I think from my high school experience, there was something very stigmatizing about being in certain classrooms so specifically I remember countless physics or math tests, particularly in the STEM subjects, where after entire class would do poorly the teacher would sort of frame it as “whats wrong with you guys, you should have done bette. I prepared you”. Whereas a lot of the time there is a lot more going on with the students maybe there are things going on outside of school where we are feeling really stressed or every student is going through their own battles. I think a lot of times something that was very stigmatizing was when our teachers would sort of frame our failures as our faults and not theirs because they prepared us so well but that isn’t how to address the problem. There are a lot of underlying issues and other things that students are going through. I think that for teachers to frame our success as black and white or only as success or failure when there are so many other layers to it is stigmatizing in my experience.
Macy: So what I was going to talk about is now that we are progressing as a society there are a lot of liberal students right? That is how were growing up. I understand the there is homophobia and there is all kinds go bigotry and racism inside of schools but I believe students just need to be educated more on social issues. Rather than saying its the person in general, maybe its their lack of knowledge. Maybe its them not being able to understand. I don’t think we should immediately point fingers at that person or say “that is horrible don’t do that”. Of course you want to facilitate better character instead of telling instructing or commanding you need to help them grow as a person. I think that is a complete lack of what teachers do, not all though. Like you mentioned tests, they ask “why did you all fail this”? Obviously there is something wrong if everyone in the class fails. When talking about education and student standards, Arizona is not that high in the public school system rankings but I don’t think our test scores or standardized test scores should define how a student works. Everyone works differently. Some people are bad at taking tests, thats the bottom line. Some people are good test takers but don’t really grasp the concepts. I think that standardized test are a good way to mark or graph someone’s education. Even when talking about social things, this all ties together. Why are kids not being educated as we’re going as a society? We are growing technically, we’re going in STEM but why are they only being educated in STEM and not social reform and mental health issues? They should know about everything so they have the power an knowledge to make their own decisions.
Andrew B: SO much to unpack in what you just said. The first thing is that I just want to say is that I think you are entirely right about the whole empathy piece in terms of how to communicate with someone that something they said is offensive. I think if you grow up being told that gay people are evil everyday, you believe that that is true. That is your truth. So figuring out how to find a ground where we can have conversation about sexuality instead of just demonizing those who have a different world view, I think is so important.
This is the second part of our “Not Short and Sweet” series on International Students Day (edited for length and clarity). You can read part three next Monday. Stay tuned: the movement is live!
