It’s the first day of school in the Howard County School system. Though I haven’t been in school for a long time, and my own kids have graduated, there are still some traditions that feel familiar: picking out a first day of school outfit, perhaps, packing a lunch, riding a school bus, gathering on a playground.
You hope you will have friends. You hope your teacher will like you. You hope that what you will be doing for the next school year is interesting or at least not so hard that you will be miserable. You may be looking forward to gym class more than math class. You may come to school drawn to music and the arts. You may be looking forward to the sweet relief of knowing you will have breakfast and lunch every day.
Some things are very different. The current presidential administration is dismantling the Department of Education. Funding for schools is being withheld, and vital resources being used to manipulate how states educate their children. Our students are going back to schools which are, at the very least, struggling with a million uncertainties.
It’s not just uncertainty, it’s fear. Students need adult role models and mentors who accept them and support them. This is more than an issue of emotional wellbeing; it’s deeply connected to academic progress. Now that national government is overtly targeting schools, teachers, and librarians for accepting people and ideas which have now been declared unacceptable - - how will that change the educational environment in schools where, in addition to being overworked, the adults around them are also afraid? Can fearful adults function confidently as reliable and trustworthy educators?
Another big change is the way that AI and ChatGPT are challenging what it means to learn and create authentically. Young people receive a steady flow of messages online that ChatGPT will make schoolwork easier. Yet those messages don’t include the truth that AI is fallible and routinely turns out answers with errors. They also don’t reveal that using AI instead of reading the book or writing the report shortchanges your brain and compromises your learning.
You may receive credit for turning in an assignment but you walk away with nothing of lasting benefit for yourself.
I came away from my years of schooling with the knowledge that it was important to check your work, and equally important to assess the validity of your sources. A report on current events is going to look different if it is based on a tabloid newspaper instead of a fact-checked, well-researched article by a professional journalist, for instance. Examining different sources, comparing information, forming ideas - - and being able to prove what you are putting forward - - are not just about learning “content.”
All of those are crucial components of developing critical thinking skills. Whether you will eventually be college bound, choose a trade, or work in the service industry, you need critical thinking skills to make good life choices, improve along your career path, and participate in democracy.
If you want to learn and grow you need reliable sources. By now you know I’m not just talking about The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. If schools are stripped of adequate funding they become unreliable as sources of student support. If teachers are stripped of the autonomy to accept and champion all students they become unreliable as sources of student learning.
If public school education itself depends on AI/ChatGPT as a content delivery mode then it becomes unreliable as a source for developing critical thinkers and nurturing active participants in a healthy democracy.
None of this is happening by chance.
If you are deeply committed to public education this is a difficult time. The things we believe in, that we have worked towards all our lives, are under attack. We don’t know what that will mean for the future. It’s a horrible image to consider on the first day of school. Yet, it is the truth.
But it is not the only truth.
In our schools and in many others across the country there will also be successes, and compassion, and the deep commitment to facilitate, challenge, and inspire. And in many homes parents will provide care, teach empathy, and encourage divergent thinking and intellectual freedom.
Every success is like a flower pushing its way through the cracks in a sidewalk. The blooming of children will not be stopped, the work of teachers cannot be suppressed, the power of education cannot be quenched.
Celebrate every success.
Village Green/Town² Comments
