Smoke and mirrors
I’m reading a book that is hurting my heart.
Written by the former director of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Christine Carter (2020) has been charting the mental health crisis inundating our youth. Dr. Carter starkly, and in no uncertain terms, explains how levels of depression and anxiety in youth right now represent the most serious mental health crisis seen “since we began measuring these things” (p xvi). These are not your run of the mill, all-adolescents-go-through-them issues; these are issues specific to this generation. Mental illness among youth has exploded since 2011, way before the pandemic hit (the book isn’t even factoring in that reality). One particular example: 40% of high school girls said they were so sad they stopped doing usual activities; 25% of these girls considered suicide. We are in a particularly fraught, dangerous, and unprecedented time.
I’m also reading reports that are hurting my heart.
We have wave upon wave of data coming out about the damage COVID wrought on students. We know kids are lagging academically and have been impacted by months of online learning and isolation. Data from the Brooking Institute shows math and reading score drops across grades that are widening over the years. Education Week research shows this same “compounding debt,” with youth needing “4.1 additional months of instruction in reading and 4.5 additional months in math to meet pre-pandemic levels of achievement” (Schwartz, 2023).
School folks are in a difficult and unchartered place. We have a generation of youth raised on screens and with social media in the midst of an overwhelming mental health crisis. We have youth who not only have psychological needs, but also academic ones created by the pandemic. These are real issues, identified by researchers and scholars the country over, based on robust data collection over many years. These are the issues districts and schools should be focusing their energies on.
Instead, schools are caught up in manufactured outrage over trans youth in schools, Black books in schools, and whether to teach African American history. In the face of so many significant, life-impacting difficulties, we can’t allow a small handful of people to fabricate non-issues that take away from the actual needs of kids. We don’t have research that shows that learning Black history harms youth. We don’t have research that shows that having books about trans youth in school libraries harms children. We can’t let people focus on non-problems, when we have real ones that require our attention and care. Children’s wellness is supported by creating systems of mental health supports in schools, not by removing books with gay characters. Teens’ success in school is supported by providing interventions that allow them read successfully, not by removing African-American studies. These anti-DEI initiatives are smoke and mirrors. They distract attention and resources away from actual efforts that will help youth. We need to collectively focus on steps to keep youth whole, well, and moving forward. Finding another way to harm them, by discrediting their identity, histories or families, will do the opposite.
Carter, C. (2020). The new adolescence: Raising happy and successful teens in an age of anxiety and distraction. BenBella Books, Inc.
Kuhfeld, M., Soland, J., Lewis, K., & Morton, E. (2022, March 3) The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up? The Brooking Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-pandemic-has-had-devastating-impacts-on-learning-what-will-it-take-to-help-students-catch-up/
Schwartz, S. (2023, July 11). Students aren’t rebounding from the academic effects of the pandemic. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/students-arent-rebounding-from-the-academic-effects-of-the-pandemic/2023/07