Current Events Needed in the Classroom

People debate over what high school students are learning and what is lacking from their curriculum. Some people call for a curriculum that better prepares students for a four-year university, while others put an emphasis on maintaining a program that helps students learn a trade.

For a while now there has been controversy over the lack of funding for arts programs and no emphasis on creativity, but rather standardized tests. I too believe that the high school curriculum is lacking a basic component. Why aren’t schools teaching students about current events?

Students are required to take four years of history classes, but there are no classes that teach simply about what is going on in our world at this moment. Students are growing up during two wars, amid protests across the country, and are living through an economic crisis. Yet, many are ignorant of these issues.

The closest I came to learning about current events was in my AP Government class in my senior year of high school. The first semester dealt with the government of the United States, while the second semester compared the government and economies of six different countries (AP Comparative Politics, which isn’t a common class in high schools).

Unfortunately, these classes were advanced placement, which meant that students had to learn a certain amount of material by a deadline, and too much focus on current events outside the lesson plan could seriously hinder a student’s chance on the national advanced placement exam.

However, that government class was one of my favorite classes because we got to compare what we were learning to what we heard on the news everyday.

However, there was still a fundamental current events component that was missing. Students didn’t know about the rioting and protests in the Middle East, the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan or the oil spill in the Gulf. Seeing as some weren’t aware that this was even taking place, it’s extremely unlikely they would know the impact and consequences of what was occurring.

There are the classes where the teachers make a prominent effort to include current events in their lesson plans. There are the teachers that ask their students, “Aren’t you aware of what’s going on in the world?”

But in reality, students learn what they need to learn to pass. The ongoing wars that our own country is involved in are not going to show up on tests. I remember sitting in my statistics class and my teacher was trying to link a graph to the uprising in Egypt.

He asked the class, “so what do we know that is going on in the world right now? It’s in the news all the time.” After nobody answered, he continued, “It’s taking place in Africa…” Still, no answer. A student then asks, “What does that have to do with stats? Is that going to be on our test?”

But if current events are a class, where students are going to be tested on what took place in the recent months, students will pay attention. Some will only consider the class another hoop they have to jump through to graduate, but many more students will gain an understanding of world events.

However, teaching current events is “easier said than done.” Public schools are facing a budget crisis, so a current events class that doesn’t fulfill a graduation requirement is probably at the low end of the priority list for school boards. This is unfortunate, since learning current events isn’t difficult. A textbook is not needed.

My comparative politics class didn’t use a textbook; we relied on the Internet. Students of the twenty-first century learn to use social media sites quicker than anyone. If you want to know the latest headlines, follow journalists like Anderson Cooper on Twitter, or bookmark the CNN News website.

Education is about preparing students, and there needs to be more focus on preparing students to understand the world they are going to become financially responsible for in a few short years. Students need to know why they are going to be paying taxes, and where their money is going. They need to understand that what happens in other countries does impact America.

Why shouldn’t we give the youth a chance to become more involved?