Greta Thunberg’s school strike has spread all over the world. Black Lives Matter and most other movements for inclusion have student branches. Student activists, and changes to the education system, are always a big part of every political movement.
Many scientists and educators have been finding ways to update the education system to the 21st century. The information is readily available. But the people who keep trying to ban Critical Race Theory and books about transgender people are never going to approve of it.
A 21st century public education system depends on the kind of student-led movements we already have, combined with workable plans.
What would happen if Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter teamed up to hold an Open Mic Day in front of their schools every week, where the words of the poetry and music outlined a better education than anyone was getting inside the school?
ACT I
Scene 1
(114 bpm)
What’s going wrong with the United States?
Do you remember 2019? Remember when Greta Thunberg made the news by sailing across the ocean? And by inspiring teenagers all over the world to protest the destruction of the environment?
Then in 2020 the pandemic started. Then George Floyd was murdered. So we had Black Lives Matter protests all summer. Remember those days?
But then it was Q Anon. Then January 6th. Then the end of universal abortion rights.
Now Donald Trump has four criminal trials going against him at the same time. He gets inspirations for his campaign speeches from Hitler and Mussolini. And he’s by far the most popular Republican candidate for president in 2024.
Where is this going? Are we still the United States of America? Or have we turned into the Humpty Dumpty States of America, where nothing can put us back together again?
Scene 2
Do you know how Greta got started in activism?
She started a school strike back in Sweden. At 15 years old, she was too young to vote, but she was old enough to see the problems she and the rest of her generation were inheriting and to wonder what they were supposed to do about them. If you’re not learning how to solve the problems you know you’re going to be faced with, what is school for?
The purpose of education is to prepare students for the future. Every certified teacher learns that on their first day of instructor training, like I did. Part of preparing students for the future now means teaching them everything we can about the environmental crisis. Some scientists and teachers have been saying that for decades.
This isn’t just about the environment. That’s not the only problem we have. Racism has been a problem in America since 1492. Once again, what does preparing students for the future mean if you’re not preparing them to solve problems they’re going to face?
Part of preparing students for the future is teaching them skills. Like reading, writing, and math. Part of it is teaching them to be citizens of the same country. That’s what history, social studies, and civics classes are for. Some classes, like science and computers, become more important every year. So they need to be updated continuously.
A better education means teaching students a better understanding of the world. A better understanding of the world makes you better at whatever you’re trying to do, and makes you better at adapting to unexpected situations. The 21st century is going to be full of unexpected situations, so we need the best education system we can get.
Scene 3
Have you ever gotten to see your favorite musician in concert? If you have, you’ve seen the power of words to bring people together. If you spend the evening singing along to your favorite songs with five or ten thousand strangers, you’re off to a good start at making a lot of new friends.
If you could be a musician who brought people together like that, would you do it? Many musicians do.
Or what if you wanted to be a journalist? If you went to college and majored in journalism, what would you learn how to do? You would learn to tell stories about current events. You could go to protests and ask people why they were there.
When reporters do that, what do the protesters say? No matter what people are protesting, whether they’re for environmental sustainability, or against systemic racism, or against getting vaccinated, or against Joe Biden being president, when reporters ask people why they’re there, the stories they tell always have the same underlying theme. One way or another, it’s always a story about why they feel that what they’re doing is
(-2 bpm)
the best decision
they can make
in the situation
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about.
That sounds complicated at first. But it’s a feeling you have all the time. Everyone has it. We just feel it in many, many different ways.
That’s the song that everyone in the world sings along with. That’s the story of everyone’s lives.
Chorus
The best decision
they can think of
in the situation
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about.
ACT II
Scene 1
Now let’s turn that around. Let’s start writing a story about your life. When you need to make a decision, how do you make it?
You try to make the best decision you can. So what makes you feel like one decision is the best?
That’s a big question. So let’s start with something simple.
When you play checkers or chess, how do you decide each move?
The best move you can make, meaning the best decision you can make, is always the one that you think gives you the best chance of winning the game. A big part of that is how you think the other player will react to your move. So your best move means the one that you believe gives you the best chance of getting what you want, considering all the things you believe could affect you. Another way to say that is,
it’s the best decision
you can think of
in the situation
you’re in,
for yourself and
what you care about.
What do you do when you play soccer or basketball? It’s the same thing. Except instead of moving pieces on a board you’re moving your body. You run and dribble and pass and shoot, and if you’re really playing to win, every move you make with every part of your body is focused on giving you the best chance of winning the game.
What do you do when you learn how to drive? You learn how to use the steering wheel and the gas pedal and the brake pedal and the turn signals. You learn what the white and yellow lines on the road mean, and what all the traffic signs and traffic lights mean. You learn how different weather conditions and road conditions affect your driving.
Once again, you learn how to use your mind and your body to get what you want, considering all the things you know about that could affect you.
Scene 2
Every decision in life works that way. Instead of following the rules of a game or the rules of the road, you’re following whatever you feel to be true about the world. Every decision you make feels to you like the best move you can make to try to succeed at your goals.
Sometimes you know why it’s the best decision. Sometimes it’s just a feeling you can’t explain. Either way, you make what you feel is
the best decision
you can make
in the situation
you’re in,
for yourself
and the people
and things
you care about.
Sometimes you make mistakes. Because sometimes the information you use in making your decisions turns out to be wrong.
Sometimes you regret the decisions you make. Because you decide later that things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to.
Sometimes you have to make decisions you hate. Because you hate all the alternatives you see even more.
No matter what decision you make or why you make it, the underlying feeling is always that it was
the best decision
you could think of
in the situation
you were in
for yourself
and the people
and things
you care about.
Scene 3
Well guess what. All of your friends, all of your enemies, all the people you’ll ever meet, and all the people you’ll never meet, all make their decisions the same way. We’re not the Humpty Dumpty States of America yet because we all have that in common.
And that’s not just in America. Everyone in America, and all over the world, lives their whole lives making
the best decisions
they can think of
in the situations
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about.
Whether you want to be a journalist, a musician, a teacher, a movie director, or anything else, you can tell stories or sing songs that bring together the underlying theme of everyone’s life story.
ACT III
Scene 1
How does that story get told in school? How could it be told better?
Every class about people thinking is a class about people making decisions. Each of those classes is a different song, but they all have the same chorus.
What do you learn about in history class, if you learn about what really happened? You learn about how people made
the best decisions
they could think of
in the situations
they were in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they cared about.
That’s White history, Black history, women’s history, and everyone else’s history all at the same time. You learn about people making decisions like those in social studies, civics, and current events classes too.
In English class you read stories about people. Whether they’re fiction or non-fiction, if they represent people realistically, they’re stories about people making
the best decisions
they can think of
in the situations
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about.
You learn to tell stories about people in theatre and film classes too.
In health class you learn about people making decisions about eating habits, exercise, alcohol, drugs, and sex. Whether people make good decisions or bad decisions, they always make
the best decisions
they can think of
in the situations
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about.
Scene 2
Why do people make decisions this way? How do we take information in through our senses and process it with our brains? That stuff comes from biology class. Making
the best decisions
we can think of
in the situations
we’re in
for ourselves
and the people
and things
we care about
is our most fundamental instinct. It’s survival and reproduction rolled into one.
All animals have that instinct. That’s how our brains evolved to process information. The people who were better at processing information were better at surviving and reproducing than people who weren’t as good at it.
Evolution is the unifying theory that makes biology a science. Physics and chemistry are the foundation of biology. Biology is the foundation of psychology. All the other branches of science tie into those.
Science depends on math.
All of your classes fit into the story of people making
the best decisions
they can think of
in at least one way.
The more you learn about anything, the better the decisions you know how to make. That’s the whole point of the education system.
Scene 3
This unifying theme among people’s stories is just one part of something much bigger. Many scientists and educators have been searching for unifying themes among their fields of study. That’s just one that they’ve discovered. There are several other big ones like this, and they lead to more discoveries.
Learning connections among fields makes learning easier, because it engages more parts of your brain. People always making
the best decisions
they can think of
is history, English, biology, current events, and theatre all at once. Why bother learning one thing at a time if you can learn five things at a time just as easily?
But not only that, this is also a way to combine what you learn in five classes to understand something.
This story of Being Human on Planet Earth is all around us, all the time. Some teachers have started teaching this way, and are having a lot of success with it.
ACT IV
Scene 1
Are you striking at your school for a better education? Or striking for people to learn to make better decisions? Really, those are the same thing.
On the days you’re in school you can show people what a better education looks like. In English class, history class, or any other class about people making decisions, you can always ask,
“Why did this person feel that this was
the best decision
they could make
in the situation
they were in,
for themselves
and the people
and things
they cared about?”
and start bringing together the story of Being Human on Planet Earth yourself.
How many problems—in school, or anywhere else— start with people misunderstanding each other, or feeling like they’re being left out? If you talk about people in terms of everyone always making
the best decisions
they can think of
in the situations
they’re in
for themselves
and the people
and things
they care about,
you make all of your classes fit together, you make all of them relevant to things that affect you and all your classmates personally, and you make the lessons you learn tell a story that all of you are part of. You can help tell that story everywhere you go, whether you’re in school, hanging out after school, on strike from school, or at home with your computer because another pandemic or flood or wildfire or hurricane or polar vortex shut your school down.
Scene 2
High school is the gateway to adulthood. It’s the last step in life that we all take together.
Then what do we do as adults? When Black Lives Matter protesters take to the streets, they take their chances on getting arrested, clubbed, tear gassed, and shot in the face with pepper spray and rubber bullets.
Why do they do all that? They do it to help change how people think.
Well guess what. All the police and mayors and governors today graduated from high school. That means they had classmates there. Many of the people who are going to be rookie cops in five years from now are in high school today. Maybe you’re one of them. Or maybe some of your classmates are. Or maybe some of your Tik Tok friends are.
If you want to help change people’s minds, do you want to wait five years and get shot in the eye with a tear gas canister for it? Do you want to shoot people with tear gas canisters? Or would it be better to start asking tough questions in school now?
Scene 3
If education is supposed to prepare students for the future, doesn’t that include learning to talk to each other about important and complicated parts of life, so we can all move forward together as a country?
Doesn’t it include learning to talk to people of other countries about important parts of life so we move forward together as an international community?
Well guess what. If you’re in high school, the education system depends on you. Children look up to you, and colleges and employers need you.
If you know what you want to learn and how to learn it, in the midst of a national crisis, one way or another you can help lead the way forward. Because the opposite of gun violence and insurrections is ideas that bring people together in ways they can’t forget.
Whatever you decide to do, it’ll be
the best decision
you can think of
in the situations
you’re in
for yourself
and the people
and things
you care about.