'Must Knows' For A New Year
And a call for vigilance
Resolution: Resilience
Happy New Year. It’s been a surreal 24 hours for me; how about you? Such hope, promise and light was at our fingertips, and then, another evil attack hit people in our nation. People who are mothers, fathers, children, friends, co-workers. God Bless all those they touch; God save those who suffer.
Kicking off 2025, Forza - which means strong, resilient and more - will look at some ways for us to become more determined and resilient in the face of challenges. This issue has a few meaningful, recommended ‘must knows,’ which, while they may not be able to stem the tide of hatred in our world, can help us mend and improve our communities, starting with our kids. Hope you agree, and you’ll take these suggested “must-knows” for 2025 into action.
The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, by Andy Crouch
Let’s start with what we need to know about the connection between technology and a nation full of anxiety-ridden students (kids and adults), an epidemic of young people suffering from mental illness, and schools and communities confused about their purpose.
“We have never been so connected - and never so lonely,” writes Andy Crouch in his 2022 book, The Life We’re Looking For.
“And indeed, those of us who eagerly joined Facebook and other platforms during the social media explosion of the 2000s could hardly have imagined that we were actually going to feel more alienated, not less, all these years later,”
Relationally bankrupt. It’s a condition that applies to all of us to some extent. But consider the impact of social media on our kids alone. The use of social media is a primary driver of students’ declining mental health, and for many, it’s leading to serious anxiety, depression and low self-esteem down the road, as well as giving life to the often-reported cyber-bullying. Tamper access to technology, and allow for parents to restrict access for younger students, says Crouch. He also supports the growing phone-free schools policy.
All of these ideas are steps that might help more people, in and out of schools, achieve a goal that’s critical for everyone: to strengthen the necessary element of human connection that has been stymied into near oblivion by an increasingly technologically dependent society.
Particularly impactful is how the book starts: with how babies perceive the human face, and the naturally wired reactions young children have to seeing emotion. It’s spellbinding, expertly researched and yet simple.
It shouldn’t take a new year, or a tragic attack, to wake us up. People matter more than things. And the great news is we can start with ourselves, and our own children, our homes, our communities and where they convene to be educated. It’s time.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt
It’s not often that a book becomes an overnight sensation among a diverse array of power brokers, but the arguments and analysis Jonathan Haidt has brought to life in his 2024 book have given life to new policies that are demonstrating how to help students recapture their own person-hood without being tethered to a phone - at least where the public can control it, in schools. And it’s full of ‘Must Knows’ about how our kids are living - or not living - and how our institutions, like schools, are having to cope with anxiety-ridden children whose brains have been rewired by their phones and an obsession with social media.
As the Free Press writes in a recent report about how the book is changing the trajectory of cellphone obsessed and diluted teens:
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam
Haidt’s work echoes the important and prescient 2000 book by Robert Putnam which found that declining civil life was tied to the abandonment of the very institutions which formed close associations between neighbors and in communities.
Those voluntary civic associations were once the glue that held people together and built permanent bonds of friendship, community loyalty and support for all. And students were more confident, more independent and richer for it.
When the book was written, social media wasn’t yet such a focus in our everyday, , but it was our increasingly busy lives and obsessive work habits to make ends meet that dissolved many communities’ ability to support those associations. From a robust Scout program, to Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis clubs, the local bowling leagues, Little League that didn’t require parents to drive hours to take their kids to sports, and of course, the once-ubiquitous notion of Church, which has been replaced by the frenzy of secular life and activities, too many people go online to replace what was lost. But it’s not the same. We all know that.
Civic orgs provided connection, built resilience and taught people how to form and maintain real relationships. More than two decades later, Haidt, Couch, Komisar and others are sounding the alarm, and not too soon.
I’m hopeful.
Notes & Asides
1. “There is only one president at a time.”
That quote, from a colleague quoting her mentor, means no matter what your point of view, you have only one person that you can influence at a time in that office. It’s incumbent upon us all to do that.
A new President will shortly be in office, bringing enormously different ideas about how to do education than his predecessor. His new Education Secretary Linda McMahon seems ready to tackle the challenges of a system that works for most but also contributes to much of the dysfunction described above.
I talked to Chris Cuomo about this before the Holidays and one of her priorities: helping reconnect education to upskilling and the workforce.
2. Children with Special Needs also stand to benefit from a fresh look at how federal programs actually adversely influence state and local policy and prevent great educators from helping these children do incredible things.
Not a day goes by where I do not meet another parent who has had to cope with the challenges of a cookie-cutter model that fails to recognize the great specialties and diverse and unique needs of so many of our students.
What is written in the books referenced above echoes the situation that many parents of special needs kids find themselves in: a society that does not understand parents’ need to drive their children’s behaviors and the many extraordinary, innovative, educators out there trying to help them.
For just a glimpse into the challenges, follow Marilyn Muller on X. She’s an edgy and amazing parent advocate for students with special needs.
Hope you’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll this year to make things work better for all kids. Follow along at @edreform on X for the latest and stay tuned for the best new iteration of CER on the web, coming later this month.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot…
Here’s to Forza for our kids and their future. Cheers,
- Jeanne
