A Plea For Insta-Amnesia
Social media. Not to sound overly cliché or anything, but the problem of perceived censorship in our school (among countless others) is directly spawned from the very platforms that give people the outlet to express themselves in the first place. Back in the days before apps like Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok (AKA The Middle Ages), you had to try really, really hard to surround yourself with people who shared your verbatim beliefs. Some (mostly politicians) succeeded in the task, but that was a rare privilege for a select few. Now, the algorithm gives everyone their own personalized echo chamber for free!
It’s not that people are afraid to share out their controversial ideas. By and large, the internet has inflated the (already large) egos of students in the Clayton bubble, making them unafraid to share their beliefs with anyone and everyone. Believe me, if you want to hear someone’s opinion on a topic they’re wholly uneducated on, you need not go further than the CHS cafeteria, where everyone talks and nobody listens. When everyone simultaneously shares their beliefs, refusing to listen to anyone else’s, nothing gets done and everyone gets mad. Considering that Clayton is relatively homogenous, many expect school life to be as agreeable as their For You pages, so when ideas and core beliefs are openly challenged, people get really mad. This issue has notably impacted history and English teachers.
During history class in March, we learned about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Well, learn might be too strong of a verb here, because the entire time, I could see my history teacher tip-toeing around language, briskly skipping over words and phrases, doing anything to remain impartial. Many of my classmates were preestablished to have… strong feelings about the situation. The classroom was a minefield, my teacher a hopeless soldier trying not to get blown up. Strong, explosive opinions don’t change within a 1 ½ hour (painfully) long history block, and any perceived challenge to their ideas would make them double down on their original thought processes, a byproduct of their one-sided internet habits. One verbal “whoopsie-daisy” from the teacher could end up with phone calls to the administration, a reprimanding, and before you know it Dr. Dan Gutchewsky shows up in your office telling you that you need to be more politically correct when educating the arrogant and youthful masses. It’s not like this is new to education, but I feel the gargantuan opinionated narcissism of the students (and the parents, I mean the students get their egos from somewhere), enabled by social media isn’t helping the whole ordeal.
Social media has also killed the benefit of the doubt. (Not that it was entirely kickin’ and thrivin’ to begin with). I’ve seen teachers treated abysmally (or at least, more horribly than usual) for books that they have no choice in teaching. Many at the beginning of the year were complaining about the misogyny in the Catcher in the Rye, hysterically screeching that it shouldn’t be taught as a result. I had to take a deep breath and ask myself if my classmates were just missing the entire point of why we read that book in the first place. They were. I haven’t viewed the books we’ve read at Clayton as inherently harmful to teach, maybe boring, dull, mind-numbing, or soul-crushing, but not catastrophic. However, even if I did view them as somewhat “dangerous,” it’d be abhorrent to attack the educators over it.
An adolescent verbal onslaught on a harmless teacher does nothing but hurt class dialogue. To threaten the parental phone call, the condemnation, the so on and so forth simply because you don’t agree with something is ineffective to fostering a healthy learning environment. When things like this happen, it feels like teachers are afraid to have open discussions with their students about tough topics, hurting civil discourse.
The 280 character limit of Twitter has reconditioned people to think hyper-literally (that is, when they choose to think at all). When people take a book, a topic, an idea at face value, and then bleat about their own misinformed interpretation of a concept, civilized discussion is dead on arrival. I’ve heard stories about teachers being handed down notices from administration after an infuriated parent/student duo complained about the content of Clayton’s education, so it’s more than understandable why discourse is critically endangered. There are so many problems, but what about a solution? Is there any solution at all? It’s hard to imagine that there is. Frankly, barring the internet getting destroyed overnight and everyone getting insta-amnesia and immediately forgetting about it, it’s impossible to imagine things will be any other way in the coming future. Everyone just deafly yells at each other in the meantime.