I truly believe that if schools made kids write about what they think about a situation every every year at the end of the school year, it would benefit our society and the way students of this generation look at situations involving the ones discussed.
The situation's wouldn't be simple as 'the girl couldn't reach her glass. Write your thoughts.'
No. It would be deep issues that have been apart of society from the beginning. About every day issues: racism, sexism, heterosexism - any type of oppression in society, drug abuse- any abuse, metal health, disabilities and their prejudice...
Basically anything wrong with our history and society's views on things. This would be discussed from kindergarten. Of course, as students age, the situations and topics discussed would get more in serious and in depth.
For small children from Kindergarten to Second grade would have the situations read out to them and they would have to write - or talk one-on-one to the teacher so they could write in their stead- 3 sentences about it.
In third grade the students will read the situations by themselves unless they have a disability. The classes would discuss the topic/situation together until 4th grade where they would work in groups after they went over the topic which the situation is based off of. When they reach 7th grade, students should be used to doing these types of problems so they will discuss it as a class under a teachers supervision. The teacher shouldn't interfere unless it gets off track or out of hand. They will do their TDA's by themselves.
Eventually students would write TDA's and do multiple of these at the last 3 weeks of school.
The school district would keep all the students' responses so that when students graduate, for a final project, they can look back at all your responses to the topics and write a final essay on every topic discussed.
If some topics are uncomfortable or triggering due to past experiences or just in general to them, then they can do a different topic than the rest of the class. Or if more than 5 are uncomfortable, the while class can do a different topic. And we could take precautions at the beginning of each of the 3 weeks where they fill out a sheet of possible topics and check off any subjects that they are uncomfortable to talk about or triggering to them because of any reason. This would also be good to make sure that homelife is alright and that other things are alright.
I think it would be a huge benefit to our society and bringing awareness to things that most of us don't think about most of the time.
As the students grow up, they will know more about these topics and how to prevent some of them from happening or how to stop a situation from getting worse.
We could also extend this into mental, disability, sexual, and many other types awarenesses.
Adding to this, this could be a whole class once we get to have electives. And the students in this class can come to schools in their district and discuss a situation with a class student-to-student with an adult with them in case things get out of hand.
Teacher's should be given basic training in body language so that while they are discussing these topics with the students, they can look for give aways with anything wrong.
Of course, not everyone will agree to doing this. Some might find it inappropriate to such young children. Might find it wrong to teach the students of this generation these things, but I'll have to tell you something that you might not know:
This generation is so, so very different than yours. We have access to the internet and therefore things we shouldn't see. Kids these days are losing their innocence by the time they are in third grade if not sooner depending on their situation. Everyone is different. Kids know how to do things even some adults don't know how to do. The world is changing and it's not a good change. We are more violent because we don't know anything else that'll make adults who think they are better than kids because they think just because they were our age once, they lived the same things, think the same way...
Well, hate to break it to you, but you don't. Adults think "protecting" us will let is have a childhood a little bit longer so they are strict. They force us to have good grades and to wear certain things that's not "appropriate" to wear in public, to watch out attitude, to have a certain amount of phone time or taking away our phone as punishment... What you are really doing by "protecting" us by being strict is teaching us how to lie better to avoid getting caught, to avoid the only thing that gives them dopamine taken away, to have to be forced to wear what you consider appropriate. And yeah, I agree a bit for the clothing, something's just aren't comfortable seeing in public but that's life. It's uncomfortable. But I'm talking about not tank tops a certain strap size because our shoulders are 'distracting'. Others should control themselves.
It's just making everything worse because we aren't a compliant generation. We are rebels because throughout history, there has been too much expectations of how people should act and how we should do this or that. We are done doing that. Too much has happened for us to be submissive and follow compliantly.
Going back to the main point of this, we should be taught the hardships humanity has gone through and is still going through. We should learn how woman are just as good as men and vice versa, how certain historical figures were gay or part of the LGBTQ+ community, or how Albert Einstein married his first cousin Elsa and cheated on her with over 10 other women, how women know as the Night Witches bombed Nazis on barely functional planes and had to turn the engine off in the air to avoid detection. Facts that are out there, but you have to search for them.
Society wouldn't get to utopia state, but I bet they'll be just a bit less violence, a bit less violent, and a bit less judgemental and less suicides.
Psychology and mental check-up's should be necessary because imagine how many kids are acting out because of home life or how many kids just don't do their work because they are afraid of getting judged about their work being bad or how many students work themselves so hard to get good grades because they are terrified of failure or not focusing in class because they are trying to control their anxiety.
It would help, if others were made more aware of the symptoms and paid closer attention to students and their patterns.
I've gotten so off track, I apologise. I have nothing else that I can think of to add to my main point of this whole thing, but if you have ideas, I would love to talk to you.
Let me know what you think, and as I've said before, I'd love to have a discussion with you all about this.
