It’s not as if there are any shortage of problems at East to bemoan. We have too many fights, a large achievement gap, no actual principal and not enough teachers. And that’s not to mention all the other issues that somebody somewhere is concerned about, such as the dreadful possibility of students walking around the school during lunch.
Well, I’ve found, after some hard consideration, yet another problem worthy of a jeremiad: people don’t believe that they can have an effect on these problems. Yes, one person might not be able to solve a problem as huge as some of the ones that face East, but that doesn’t mean that an individual can’t take steps to mitigate the problem.
Some problems might even rely on an individual solution, however disappointing that might sound. I’d love it if the school would tailor itself to my wishes, but that, firstly, will never happen, and secondly, would be a disaster for most everybody else. Furthermore, people can disagree about what actually is a problem: Is the issue students being allowed to substitute AP Gov for Civics or not being allowed to do such?
Obviously, it would be nice if the district could take down the teacher shortage singlehandedly. I suspect Mr. Acome would thrill to end all fights at East with the push of a single button. But that’s not the way most major problems work. If something looks like an easy solution, it might be hiding large tradeoffs. For an illustration, there were no fights at East when school was entirely online, but that doesn’t mean we should bring back online schooling.
However, there are steps that individual people can take to address many of these problems. Some might actually confront the problem, while some might just stop it from affecting somebody. Both are good insofar as they don’t create more problems or expose more people to an issue.
Let’s demonstrate this by moving to a hypothetical issue: the lack of an architecture class at East. The school probably isn’t going to decide to randomly offer a class on architecture, because there’s a long list of reasonable topics for classes and nobody is telling them how much they would love a class on architecture. But if somebody created an Architecture Club, and architecture-associated classes like Drafting and Art History were very popular, that would create more pressure on the district to offer such a class.
Although I don’t know of any demand for an architecture class, this kind of thinking is also applicable to larger problems facing East. Fights are much too great a topic to be dealt with in a single paragraph of a single column, but there are still possible individual actions. One can avoid making false, exaggerated, or doubtful claims about fights, thereby both not contributing to people’s anxiety and not glorifying this state of conflict.
In both the hypothetical scenario of an architecture class and the real scenario of fights, there are obstacles to collective or administrative action not faced by individual actions. School protocols limit transparency about many disciplinary incidents, which prevents a much more effective way to stop damaging claims about fights. The administration generally needs evidence of demand for a class before it is offered. Yet individual actions can be a substitute.
I don’t mean to disparage action at higher levels than the individual or small group. In fact, getting a complete solution to any problem probably will take some form of a collective action. But individual actions can have effects at higher levels, such as somebody starting a petition for an architecture class causing the school to realize the demand for it. Furthermore, if a collective action isn’t going to be taken, at least an individual action can do something, however small it may be.
There’s one more caveat here: this isn’t a license to run hog wild, simply replacing your problems with problems for other people. There are other stakeholders in this, and nobody can always be the person with the most investment in an issue. Solving an issue by creating another doesn’t make East better.
Given all this, there’s clearly some pressure on students to take action themselves rather than waiting for a fix from above. However, this isn’t the easiest thing in the world. The aforementioned issue of weighing one’s own desires against those of other stakeholders is hard enough as is, but people also need to consider their own values and what they prioritize solving.
However, it’s good to see a lot of students trying to solve issues in the school. East has seen tons of new student organizations, a composting program, an e-mail about the bathrooms, substantial protests against racism, and a variety of efforts to improve student mental health. But there are also plenty of students who feel disenfranchised and even take a cynical view towards these efforts, and the district often seems apprehensive or unprepared for student enthusiasm.
I won’t say that I’m in any way a model for taking productive action to solve problems; I mostly just carp about them in the ECHO. But I will say that trying to solve issues at East, even relatively minor ones like the lack of a Linguistics Club, have brought me the greatest rewards of my high school experience.
All this talk of the problems at East can definitely sound a bit pessimistic, but I’m pretty enthused about East’s future. Plenty of students are already working to fix problems. It may not be easy, but every one of you can make a difference.
