Dear Readers,
In the last two years, there’s been a series of changes in Upper Arlington’s education system. From the shift to Common Core to the one-to-one laptop program to the new-and-possibly-improved SAT test to the increasingly stressful college admissions process, it’s been difficult to keep up.
In both of the March issues, writers explore these changes in education and what they mean to students.
Writers and editors Kelly Chian and Ellise Shafer discuss how the pressure to succeed in school has affected students in unimaginable and often unhealthy ways on pgs. 8-10. “Under Pressure” demonstrates that the stress students are under comes not only from the education system itself, but oftentimes friends, family and culture.
And on pages pgs. 6-7 of the Arlingtonian supplement, Journalism-II writers Tom Weimer and Bre Hart delve into the world of personalized education. They put a magnifying glass to the issue of student privacy in the technology age and uncover just how protected (or unprotected, I should say) our laptops are from the administration.
When addressing the issues in our education system, I think we often get caught up with how much all of these policies and changes and pressures impact us, and forget how much power we have to impact them.
I frequently find myself deferring to the opinions of education experts, principals, even parents when discussing the problems with education. I forget that my own experiences as a student of the system are valuable.
Education systems are created and tweaked and reformed and changed to better fit the needs of students. So as students, it should be our duty to help them do that. We complain a whole lot about how we dislike the way things are done.
That’s good.
But complaints are too often done behind the administration’s back, under our breaths and in quick texts to our friends. Instead, we should be complaining to the administration’s (and other decision-making entities’) faces, clear and out loud, preferably in politely worded emails and letters.
It’s important to remember that education is here to serve us. So, if we’re not happy with the way things are— or the way they’re changing— then it’s up to us to say so.
Jenny Jiao, ’16
Editor-in-Chief