OPINION: Equity or Equality?

By Joshua Cook

There’s been a problem plaguing the American school system in recent years. According to multiple sources, ever since the 2020 pandemic and a little bit before that multiple problems have arisen including but not limited to sinking student grades, declining college enrollment rates, and the graduating class size. Even if none of these problems affect me personally I do think it’s time to look into the legitimacy and efficiency of our modern systems, particularly in how we run a complex based on equality which is frequently criticized by both students and teachers alike.

The main issues seem to be nihilism and laziness. The National Assessment of Educational Progress held a study in 2024 that displayed amplified absenteeism since the pandemic, up to 3 days a month missed even by 12th graders. Most students went back to school in Aug. 2020, but some went back as late as May 2021. Humans are animals who, naturally, need contact with the outside world and especially friends and family. The pandemic starved us of these privileges, which impacted the psyche of many. When one voids themselves of an environment as significant yet not very enjoyable (to many) as school it can be hard to gain the drive and courage to go back for extended periods of time.

It may also be because of the newer generation of children questioning the need for school as a whole. A great number of important occupations within the recent years and months are being replaced by robots and AI as a whole which makes many occupations harder to fill in and will be almost impossible to fill within a few years, I’m sure. On top of this, the election of Donald J. Trump has made the Republican party have complete control over school funding, and he has gone on to use this power to defund public K-12 schools for over $12,000,000,000 (yes, billion) which is making it difficult for schools to gather together money to stay afloat. The most prominent Republican figures such as Vice President J.D. Vance calling universities “the enemy”, technological leader Elon Musk saying that universities “are not for learning” and of course Trump himself saying that colleges are run by “marxist maniacs and lunatics” have all expressed strong distaste for the education system. With all of these people running the country in some way, it’s hard to escape the influence in their words regardless of political party.

At the end of the day, in my opinion, the damage is done. I truly don’t think it’s the fault of our established organization and how it’s run but instead the outside factors which it was never designed to adapt to. Most secondary school teachers went to school to teach 1-2 subjects to students of a particular grade and academic level and a switch to an equity-based system would just put more strain on the already deprived teachers, and the investments that would have to be made to integrate a system including tests, different classrooms and monitoring of academic advancement is a hassle and may not be possible with the financial restrictions we have now. Overall, we’re just fine functioning how we are now; even with our flaws this is as good as it’s going to be for a while.