WHAT WE DON’T TEACH TEENS

PBS WORLD channel is a trove of valuable Indie films. But a recently featured one on education called “The Pushouts”  really troubled me. Filmed primarily in L.A. over 25 years, with students who left high school to seek sanctuary in gang memberships before being recruited into a program YO!Watts in LA by Victor Rios, school dropout, Oakland gang member and felon turned professor. There’s absolutely no question that Rios and other teachers and counselors who stuck by these students cared deeply about them, and provided them with dazzling instruction, as in the clip on an absolutely brilliant South Indian algebra teacher whose skill, passion and humor cancelled a decade of self-doubt and despair of learning for his entire class in a single session!

What deeply concerned me was that despite the obvious bravery, intelligence and grit of the students, and their passionate and loyal teachers, the ultimate and unquestioned objective was Getting Students Into College. That was it. As if College, (Any and all Colleges) were Heaven. NO discussion of what they were going to learn, and how that would justify years of effort, sacrifice, and expense. Everything pushed forward without question.

It’s high time educators took a hard look at who’s profiting financially from these decisions, and what they’re pushing tests on high school students who’re already discouraged and disadvantaged. What they’re learning too often these days is how to pass tests: strategies for passing STEM courses, based on techniques that will soon be outdated and outmoded due to ever accelerating automation.

What we don’t see, Anywhere, (except in the most expensive, prestigious private schools) are activities that incorporate and require the curiosity, physical energy and stamina of teens  who want to be useful, who want to change things, who want life to be more equitable and focused, especially given more dire predictions of climate change.

Why aren’t we paying teens to learn a variety of skills that can help us all combat dire predictions for the future?

Why are they stuck behind desks (or incarcerated) when they’re the ones with endless supplies of energy, curiosity, and stamina?

We need to be channeling those qualities into new and affordable solutions that will address shortages of housing, food, medicine, and personal care through series of paid internships.

I don’t want to subsidize future profiteers, stockbrokers, or entrepreneurs obsessed with ever faster transmittal of bits of information. Or physicians who unquestioningly prescribe dangerous procedures and poisonous concoctions. Community Forums on what we desperately need are way over-due. Let’s start with Round-Table discussions of what skills need to be learned to serve local needs, and how and where experimental trainings can be subsidized so teens are recognized, respected, and compensated fairly: i.e. Valued instead of Warehoused.