Rather than engaging in lessons, worksheets, and book reports, American students are engrossed in technology during the school day. Whether scrolling on social media, listening to music through headphones, or texting friends, high schoolers seem not to be learning.
Students disengaging begs the question of whether they are learning. Seemingly a simple question, it requires a deeper analysis and understanding, such as looking at the perspective of those who live in the classroom: teachers.
Mrs. Shannon Kintz, an English teacher at Hazelwood West High School, believes the question should be answered student-by-student. Like Kintz, Ms. Camryn Keaton, a math teacher at Hazelwood West High School, holds a similar view regarding individual student performance. “The answer to that question depends on the student and the situation,” Kintz said.
While students as a whole may be learning from their friends and social interactions, academics are much more complicated. If a student chooses to learn and values their education, then the success they’ll achieve will be much greater than that of a student who chooses not to learn and instead chooses to use their phone during class.
“Those who choose to learn are persistent, goal-oriented, inquisitive, and have immense amounts of grit,” Shannon Kintz said.
Meanwhile, those who don’t choose to learn place no pressure upon themselves to actually focus on their academics, resulting in a situation in which the student will not succeed in learning or applying the information in which they were taught. In short, whether students are learning or not is not merely a statistic, but the result of the actions of individuals.
Teachers will try their hardest to help students learn, but it is ultimately up to the students themselves whether or not they will pay attention and value the education they receive.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink it.” Keaton said.
Education is truly something driven by the student consuming it, and whether or not an individual chooses to engage in it is ultimately what results in the fate of one’s educational experience. The general consensus for the question of “are students learning?” is not that students are either learning or not learning, it’s that students are making a choice whether to learn or not. The learner will go above and beyond to ensure that they succeed academically, placing their distractions to the side.