A student illuminates the black power button on a school computer and inputs his or her password. Some time passes. All the glaciers melt. Humans evolve so they finally don’t have their useless appendixes. Finally, after an eternity, the computer turns on. Another several decades pass and the blue login screen pops up.
Finally, once the sun has burned up, the student has successfully logged in. The student goes onto the Internet with excitement only to see the absolutely captivating headline on the MCPS homepage of “Bell Schedules Might Change.”
Not only does no one read the MCPS homepage, no one even bothers to glance at its monotonous local news. By having a news blurb on the MCPS homepage instead of local news, students could momentarily leave the Bethesda Bubble.
“I like the idea of making the homepage more informative,” junior Ivori Liu said. “I rarely read the MCPS news and am up for a change.”
According to PewResearch, U.S. education levels have risen since the 1970s, yet public knowledge has not risen accordingly. The 2007 study found a frightening lack of global knowledge—93 percent of Americans could identify Arnold Schwarzenegger as the previous governor of California but only 36 percent could identify Vladimir Putin as the president of Russia.
Exposing students to current events in school could increase their public knowledge and thus could help them in school. Whether it’s history or English class, up-to-date knowledge of the world can be useful in anything from essays to presentations.
One thing that MCPS could do is have links on their page to several news sites. Furthermore, to protect their neutrality, MCPS could have an internship for high school students who would write articles on current events. This would be an engaging experience for the interns, boost their resume, and help inform other students on global events.
History teacher Courtney Osborne said she fears the new homepage would distract students from their work.
“As a history teacher, I love the idea of students reading the news,” Osborne said. “But for now I would just keep it as MCPS because of the distraction it could cause.”
While this is a legitimate concern, students could still read the news as they wait for other students to login. Furthermore, teachers can see what each student is doing on their computer and prevent them from getting off track.
While it’s important to stay active in your schoolwork and daily life, isolation (as Japan taught us in the sixteenth century) is never a good thing. I understand that many students read the news frequently; yet the more the merrier.
MCPS knows the importance of keeping up with the times; Introduction to Engineering is a required class and thus the county wants us not fall behind in an increasingly modernizing world. However, if Introduction to Engineering is a class meant to keep us informed, then knowledge of current events is all the more essential. Since Current Events isn’t a mandatory class, students should at least be exposed to it when they log on to the computer.
Change always needs to start somewhere. By slowly emphasizing the importance of global events (not just the importance of local news), perhaps more students will develop the healthy habit of checking the news regularly.
