Tag: Education

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The Importance of Teaching Public Speaking in Schools

When I tell friends that I was on my high school’s speech and debate team, and that more specifically, I did something called extemporaneous speaking—a category where I had to make and then deliver a speech on a current events topic I drew in just half an hour—they tend to be horrified at the thought of trying to do the same thing, impressed that I was able to do this, or a little bit of both. Then, when I add that this experience with speech and debate significantly improved my comfort level with public speaking, some of the people who hear this say that they are so terrified of public speaking.

And it’s not just anecdotal experience that has shown me that a lot of us are afraid of public speaking. A survey of Americans’ top fears in 2020-21 found that 29% were either afraid or very afraid of public speaking. Another way to put this into context is that there are about as many Americans likely to be afraid of public speaking as they are of dying, theft of property, or being unemployed.[1] Our society, on average, is literally as fearful of public speaking as of dying. Let that sink in.

In spite of that fear, public speaking is an important aspect of the daily lives of most people of professional importance. Elected officials, major company CEOs, teachers and professors, nonprofit leaders, influential small business owners, clergy people, newscasters, and athletes are all among the groups of people who find themselves doing public speaking with some frequency. The professions that some, or many, of us aspire to involve some form of public speaking—the very thing that terrifies so many of us as well.

To make those aspirations a more feasible reality for those of us who fear public speaking, I think that public speaking needs to be a part of every high school’s curriculum. Not college—high school. It should be in the curriculum at that level because not everyone completes college, and not everyone even goes to college. Some people end up in positions straight out of high school where the skill of communicating clearly through word of mouth, which is something that comes with learning how to be a good public speaker, is absolutely vital. If we were to wait until college, people who end up in the military straight out of high school (the military being one such position where good communication skills are vital), to use one example, might not be as well-equipped with a public speaking skillset as they would otherwise if it were taught in high school.

As to how it is in the curriculum, it can take multiple forms. Classes with projects where students have to present their projects in front of a class might be a healthy way to give students exposure to public speaking, even if the focus of the class itself isn’t public speaking per se. However, I think that there can (and probably should) be a public speaking class that is a required part of every high school’s curriculum, for every student—not just a speech and debate team that students can choose to either join or not join.

Perhaps, by making sure that every student gets exposed with the opportunity to learn how to perfect their public speaking skills, we can better ensure that public speaking is not a fear that acts as a mental block to pursuing the things some of us hope to do one day.

[1] https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/_files/Babbie%20center%20fear2021/blogpost-americas-top-fears-2020_-21-final.pdf

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On Book Bans

In the last several weeks, there’s been a lot of attention on the fact that some schools and school districts are banning books that they think are inappropriate for one reason or another. Proponents of banning certain books are arguing that by not allowing certain books in, their kids are somehow being “protected.” And then, on the other hand, opponents of the banned books are arguing that the banning of some of them in certain schools and school districts is shameful.

However, what gets lost in the whole discussion on book bans is the fact that the sense of protection that comes from book bans (among those in favor of the bans) is a false one.

But why would I say that?

Let’s think about the sorts of book bans that give some groups of parents a sense of protection: ones that focus on books with certain profanities, with certain takes on racial issues, or with characters who are openly LGBTQ+ (or with certain takes on LGBTQ+ issues), to name a few.[1] Some may think that by banning such books, access is being restricted on the topics the books address. In reality, information on all these things—the profanities, the takes on racial issues that result in certain books getting banned, and LGBTQ+ stuff—is just a Google search away. All one is doing by banning books is simply changing the medium through which many people gain access to the sort of information they might acquire through the banned book. This is one reason I say that book bans provide a false sense of protection for those in favor of the bans.

But there is another reason I argue this: one can get a book through means other than reading it at school. A book as popular as To Kill a Mockingbird is one that a curious kid could buy with some allowance money (depending on how much money it is) at the bookstore closest to school or home. Some of these books can be easily checked out at local libraries for no money at all. Many of them are available on places like Amazon, provided the parents are willing to use their credit card to purchase the book for their kid. All that banning a book does, in some cases, is allow book retailers to make money off of selling the banned book to interested and curious minds.

However, even if one didn’t seek out information on transgender people through a Google search or check To Kill a Mockingbird out of the local library, there is one inescapable fact: the issues covered in some, even many, of these banned books are issues that many of us are likely to face at some point in our lives. You can ban a book with a gay couple in it, but when a friend of yours comes out to you as gay,[2] there is no escaping LGBTQ+ issues. You can ban a book perceived as having a message that is too anti-police, but at some point, someone is likely to run into someone else who believes wholeheartedly in the message of the Black Lives Matter movement. Because of the aforementioned inescapable fact, I’m of the mind that while one’s exposure to the information in many of these banned books may sometimes be delayed, it cannot be escaped forever. It’s simply not possible in this world, short of living in an extraordinarily tight bubble (and even then, there is information that can seep in through that bubble).

The previous paragraph brings me to the real injustice with regard to book bans that needs to be talked about, which is the fact that it leaves some people unaware about certain major topics and issues in our society until confronted with those topics or issues. To me, that is a real injustice because, quite frankly, it does not seem healthy to leave people unaware until that critical point, because that is a point when decisions can be (and often are) made from a place of insecurity, ignorance, and stress—a place that can lead to bad decision-making with regard to how they treat their friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family members.

[1] I’m not making this stuff up. Those are three of the things that come up the most frequently on the American Library Association’s list of most banned and challenged books over the past few years: https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/learning/banned-books-2021#george-by-alex-gino-1

[2] Yes, I have a good friend who came out to me as gay relatively early in his coming out process. True story.

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What Is…Critical Race Theory? (Part Two)

In Part One of my “what is” post on Critical Race Theory (CRT), I covered what the theory is, as well as some interesting things I learned about the theory. However, at the end of Part One, I talked about some questions raised by both CRT and the things I learned from it. Those questions include:

  • What are people angry about with CRT in the current political discourse?
  • If this theory has been around for decades, why are people only now getting angry about this?
  • Why is it conservatives who are getting angry about CRT when many of the most prominent critical race theorists critique liberal approaches to racism?
  • Is this anger justified?

Answers to the first, second, and third questions I pose here help us answer the fourth question, so grab some popcorn, and let’s get started…

A fair bit of the attention on CRT appears to stem from one person: Christopher Rufo. Rufo, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (a conservative think tank), heard from municipal employees in Seattle, Washington about anti-bias workforce training[1] that he perceived to go too far. He summarized those findings in an article for the City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s magazine. The article was a major hit and led to discoveries from him about similar trainings happening elsewhere.[2] Among the things he noticed from the trainings was that they cited people who were deeply involved in scholarship related to CRT. Rufo thought that in CRT, he found the perfect term, for as he put it himself, “Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.” Furthermore, he concluded, it is not “an externally applied pejorative” unlike some terms (think of the term “liberal snowflakes” as an example of an externally applied pejorative), but is instead “the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.”[3]

Rufo was correct in thinking he found the perfect term (at least from the standpoint of trying to get national attention), for his work continued getting attention to the point that he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight in September 2020—a show in which Rufo called on then-President Donald Trump to ban CRT in workforce trainings the federal government did. Within weeks, Trump did exactly what Rufo wanted him to do.[4]

However, Trump lost re-election. But just because Trump lost doesn’t mean that the movements on CRT from the American right ended—not by any means. Instead, the attention that Rufo and others had on CRT shifted from workforce trainings to K-12 classrooms.[5] This brings us to more or less where we are today on CRT, which is that there is a fear among many on the American right that the theory rewrites American history in a way that would “persuade white people that they are inherently racist and should feel guilty because of their advantages.”[6] The center of that concern about the rewriting of American history focuses on the classroom, with the concern that young kids would be indoctrinated in this seemingly harmful way by CRT. Now, even the slightest bit of concern that kids are being “indoctrinated” with CRT creates anger among some.

But is this anger justified?

This answer is going to upset some people, but…no.

Here’s the thing about CRT and K-12 schools: for all the chatter of CRT being taught to schoolchildren, the teaching of the theory is usually not required at the K-12 level.[7] In a survey of more than 1,100 teachers across the United States conducted by the Association of American Educators, which is a nonpartisan professional group for educators, it was found that 96% of respondents say that their schools do not require them to teach CRT.[8] Instead, the teaching that does happen on CRT largely occurs in law schools and graduate programs.[9] Needless to say, the panicked rhetoric on CRT in K-12 schools just doesn’t seem to match up with what is happening on the ground.

What I’m guessing (and perhaps my guess is wrong, as I am not a teacher myself) is that the rhetoric with CRT has gotten mixed in there with larger, yet important, discussions on how classrooms should navigate through topics of race and racism in classrooms—a hot-button discussion issue in light of the events of the last few years in America, ranging from the increased visibility of white supremacy to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others. Such discussions are important and needed, though even without CRT in the mix these discussions would be a source of major division. But I fear that heading into such discussions with the falsehood that CRT is being taught and is indoctrinating K-12 students only makes those already difficult conversations even more so.

Those conversations need to happen, though. They need to happen because there continue to be stark racial disparities in the United States, and they should not be ignored. The racial disparities in everything from incarceration rates[10] to educational attainment,[11] from health care coverage[12] to deaths from gun violence,[13] are so great that we would be doing an injustice to ourselves and others if we were to just try to sweep such disparities under the rug. One can debate when to have these conversations with schoolkids, and how to have them, but we would not be truthful as a country about our current disparities if we never had those conversations anywhere.

[1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1012696188

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory

[3] Ibid.

[4] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1012696188

[5] https://time.com/6075193/critical-race-theory-debate/

[6] https://apnews.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory-08f5d0a0489c7d6eab7d9a238365d2c1

[7] A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 22% of respondents who said they were familiar with CRT (and most poll respondents said they weren’t familiar with CRT) believed that it is taught in most public high schools: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/many-americans-embrace-falsehoods-about-critical-race-theory-2021-07-15/

[8] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/teaching-critical-race-theory-isn-t-happening-classrooms-teachers-say-n1272945

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57908808

[10] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-10-13/report-highlights-staggering-racial-disparities-in-us-incarceration-rates

[11] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rfa.asp

[12] https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/health-coverage-by-race-and-ethnicity/

[13] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

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A New Feature at the End of My Blog Posts

When I started this blog, it was with the goal of educating people on injustices we may be blind to and/or blindly commit. However, in recent months especially, I’ve been thinking about whether education all by itself is really enough.

Now don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t considering abandoning my blog after all the work I’ve done over the years. Nor do I think that education is unimportant—it is important that people are educated on issues of injustice so that we can address the issues within ourselves (If I didn’t believe that to be the case, this blog wouldn’t exist!). Yet, at the same time, that education is only of limited use if we only keep the impacts of said education to ourselves. Simply put, education of oneself without doing anything else doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t change anything or anyone other than possibly ourselves, and it certainly doesn’t lead to the sort of large-scale changes that are needed to address large-scale issues. For all that one might feel virtuous for being more educated on matters of racism, sexism, ageism, or any other number of things, it takes more than one virtuous person to see the changes one may desire to come to fruition.

I therefore found myself thinking much more about how to turn education into action and how to further amplify the voices of those who are working tirelessly on various issues of injustice. Of course, that action can take multiple forms. Sometimes the action is in donating to an organization that would use the funds to work on systemic changes. Sometimes the action is in giving volunteer hours to an organization looking to achieve systemic change. Sometimes the action is in being a volunteer to knock on doors, attend protests, or call elected leaders to hold them accountable for something. The sort of help that is needed in advancing a cause varies from organization to organization and from movement to movement, but one thing I can assure you of is that there are many ways to turn education into action. I just needed to find a way to share with others where we can turn education into action.

It was through this thinking that I came up with a new idea for my blog: with blog posts where it is clear that one or more organizations are looking to address a particular injustice/injustices I am discussing, I list those organizations at the bottom of the blog post.

The new practice is intended to serve people who may be passionate about a particular injustice or set of injustices after reading one of my posts (or reading something not on my website) but are really unsure of where to go next. By having this new practice going forward, I hope to provide a place for my readers to go beyond the “like” button for my blog post or the comment section (though I certainly welcome “likes” and comments).

My hope in having this is that what I will do from now on can be a resource for people who want to turn education into some form of action. While yes, this blog is and will continue to focus on educating people about injustices, I also want to be sure that my readers have the ability to act after getting educated. After all, education only reaches its maximum usefulness if you use it to educate others and/or take action yourself.

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On Child Sex Trafficking in the United States

There has been a lot of misinformation with regard to child sex trafficking in the United States, as well as how it plays out. As such, I thought it was important to dedicate a blog post solely to the facts on child sex trafficking, how it plays out, and where one can go to learn more about and properly advocate for child sex trafficking victims as well as help put an end to it.

I should start by noting that child sex trafficking isa serious issue, yet the data is a little shaky on what the true extent of it is. I am not saying this to sound paranoid, but instead to point out that it has been difficult to get good estimates on exactly how many children are victims of child sex trafficking each year. Several years ago, it was estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood 10,000 children a year are victims of sexual exploitation in the United States, but that number could be as low as 4,500 or as high as 21,000.[1] However, even if the number of children experiencing sex trafficking each year is closer to 4,500, it is 4,500 too many. It is a serious problem.

Not only is this a serious problem, but it may surprise some people as to who is trafficked and how child sex trafficking plays out. For example:

  • Even though it may be tempting to believe that the majority of child trafficking victims in the U.S. comes from foreign countries, most domestic trafficking victims are American citizens.[2]
  • Even though a common stereotype of trafficked victims is that they are kidnapped, fewer than 10% of child sex trafficking cases involve kidnapping. However, causes of child sex trafficking are varied and complicated.[3]
  • Traffickers often prey on economically and socially vulnerable children—for example, children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse, children in poverty, and children on the streets.[4]
  • Statistically, children who are Native Americans or LGBTQ+ are among the youth most vulnerable to child sex trafficking.[5]

As to where one should turn for information and advocacy on this issue, I strongly urge people to turn to organizations with a long record on human trafficking issues. Organizations such as the Polaris Project and Anti-Slavery International[6] are dedicated to educating people properly on child sex trafficking, and human trafficking issues in general, so that they can be empowered to tackle this issue in whatever ways they are able. Additionally, such organizations are focused on anti-human trafficking issues worldwide—important since human trafficking is really a global issue, even if this blog post focuses on how one aspect of human trafficking (child sex trafficking) plays out in the United States.

I would also recommend supporting organizations that support the types of children who are most likely to be vulnerable to child sex trafficking and/or advocate for children most likely to be vulnerable. Organizations like Prevent Child Abuse America (dedicated to preventing child abuse in the United States), Covenant House (focused on providing housing and supportive services to youth facing homelessness), and True Colors United (which focuses on LGBTQ+ youth homelessness) all serve groups of people most likely to become victims of child sex trafficking. As such, support of the work of organizations such as these, and others I did not mention here, should be seen as part of a strategy of limiting child sex trafficking by limiting the number of vulnerable children in the first place.

I also urge people in the media to promote organizations that are doing crucial work on this issue. There needs to be coverage on the facts that: a) child sex trafficking is a serious issue in this country and b) there are organizations out there working hard to address this issue. For the sake of making sure the general public is informed on both the problem of child sex trafficking as well as solutions to it, news media needs to do this. The well-being of vulnerable children depends on it.

Last, but not least, I encourage all of us to make sure that we’re educated on how child sex trafficking plays out, so that we know how to talk with our friends and neighbors about how it exists and what legitimate efforts there are to combat it. Without that education, it is impossible for us to understand how the issue plays out, let alone how it can be addressed.

[1] Note that this is only an estimate, and there’s high potential for this number being much higher or lower than said here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/02/the-fishy-claim-that-100000-children-in-the-united-states-are-in-the-sex-trade/

[2] https://www.unicefusa.org/child-trafficking-us

[3] https://polarisproject.org/blog/2020/08/what-we-know-about-how-child-sex-trafficking-happens/

[4] Ibid.

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/child-sex-trafficking-lgbtq-youth-among-most-vulnerable-n718301

[6] As a relevant aside, this organization dates back to 1839!