As I sit in classes at my high school, I hear these comments from my classmates. Hurtful comments.
But they don’t reflect hate, they reflect misunderstanding.
Most people in my classes couldn’t tell me what is happening in the world right now. Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know.
Schools don’t talk about current issues in the world. Yes, I’ve seen a few CNN10s in school, but I’ve never sat down for more than 30 minutes to talk about the issues happening in my country, my state, or my city.
As of January 20, 2024, President Donald Trump has been in office. He came into office with a policy known as “America First,” an approach towards restrictive immigration. This means working towards the output of immigrants and the input of American independence. This policy is also aimed towards economic nationalism (tax cuts, negotiating trade deals), reasserting national sovereignty (independent authority for a nation to govern itself), and lower healthcare, there are 36 executive orders towards tariffs and trade, 17 for health, a whopping 62 towards foreign policy, and 9 on immigration as of the Federal Register.
In less than a year and a half in office, Trump has issued 235 executive orders, commpared to the previous 4-year presidency of Joe Biden, who issued 162.
On his first day in the office, he passed 26 orders. And 143 in the first year.
And as I learn all this, I’ve heard of only a few of the many, like Renee Good, a 37-year-old American woman who was shot by an immigration officer on January 7th, 2025, and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who was shot at least 10 times by an immigration officer for defending another protester. That’s 2 people out of the 37 deaths of people in ICE detention within the last year.
And that’s just ice detention. Thousands of protesters have been sprayed with tear gas canisters, fired pepper balls at, and shot with rubber bullets.
I wouldn’t have known these things if it weren’t for me researching them on my own time. Which makes me wonder if other people know too.
From a survey I did with kids around my school, most people place their knowledge on current national issues at a 6 out of 10. Over half said their main source of news is from social media, and only 1 person said they get most of their news from school.
I wanted to see what most high schoolers do not know about their country, and from the data in the survey the top two answers where students didn’t know, were reconciliation and the economy.
Reconciliation is the making of one belief compatible with another. In other words, agreeing on records or files. In the United States, this is a significant issue due to extremely polarized political points and structural, social, and economic disparities that prevent consensus. This leads to conflict and a separation of unity.
Second is the economy. The United States is economy conflicted. With rising costs and elevated debt, the economy may look weak, but with a lowering unemployment rate and a cooling job market, it creates data that looks good but feels tough for many.
As high schoolers grow closer to voting age, knowing current national issues and the history behind them is extremely important. Our generation could be the next of these issues, or they could change them but nonetheless they need to be talked about.
We are the next generation of parents, voters, and political leaders schools need to be preparing students for their futures beyond high school.
