LFG: the critical thinking edition

LFG is a documentary that chronicles the athletic dominance of the US women’s soccer team. Additionally, the documentary chronicles the players’ legal battles to be paid equally to male professional players of the same sport. Most Americans will only be able to cite the former.

A primary career goal of American school kids has long been to be a professional athlete. Then children become teenagers, and a tiny percentage advance enough in their sport to even hope they might be the next Megan Rapinoe or Jessica McDonald. The vast majority, however, make jv instead of varsity, can’t run any faster, or have their dreams otherwise wrecked by reality.

A newly popular ambition for American kids is to be a social media influencer. As long as someone’s follower list is growing, reality will have a harder time sinking those dreams.

Social media presences interfere in teenagers’ daily lives in ways ambitions of being a pro athlete never could.

Educators see manifestations of kids’ obsession with social media all day long. Phones up at an angle for selfies and discussions about beating the algorithm with a new TikTok idea are the Great White shark of distraction that constantly threatens students from their task of navigating the waters of education.

Oh, and keep in mind that today, most students feel like they aren’t learning anything at all; they feel bored. School is a waste of their time.

Those kids aren’t really wrong.

Rather than encouraging students to navigate through rough challenges, education has turned into begging students to wade through a few facts.

Teachers, hamstrung by parents who want to protect their children from perceived negative influences — and administrators who are often cowed by parents’ intensity — have devolved from enthusiastic champions of student progress to timid milquetoasts, terrified of another hostile email or phone call.

Students, wishing to avoid certain death at the pounding boredom of Moby Dick — their teachers’ reiteration that the US government has three branches and the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell — understandably turn toward the gaping maw of Jaws: their 13 Pro and several hundred unopened snaps.

Who can blame them? At least SnapChat and Reddit temper the lethal apathy brought on by a teacher too terrified and beaten down to deviate from the passive expectations of state standards.

Hope exists. But for schools to help the current generation of social-media obsessed teenagers navigate away from the Great White whale of boredom while they sit in classrooms, certain social constructs need to change.

Educators must be encouraged to diversify what students experience in the classroom to include what they already experience in the cafeteria and what they will experience as adults.

Issues of inequality, identity, autonomy, and brutality — social issues that make parents much more uncomfortable than they make students — need to be discussed.

Parents need to recognize that their anger at the state of their child’s academic performance and schools in general is not any teacher’s fault.

Teachers, always trying to meet each child’s needs, are overworked to the point of exploitation, and their joy — lightbulbs glowing over the head of challenged students — has been rendered all but impossible to engender. The few supportive parents who remain in contact with teachers can’t counterbalance the rage of others.

Students should know that not only did Megan Rapinoe and Jessica McDonald achieve the childhood dream of being professional athletes, but they also brought issues of gender inequality to the forefront of American consciousness by challenging their employer’s pay scale in court.

Whether or not parents have talked with their children about the nuances of social issues, their kids know about them. They do. Those same kids have or have not have already developed views that align with their parents’ views. Class discussion won’t change that fact.

Classroom educators have influence over their students’ mindsets, but no ethical educator sees their classroom as a space to influence students to do anything but think.

Even the most skeptical parent should recognize that a lack of critical thinking skills will exclude their children from achieving the financial security that is found through professions such as law, construction, plumbing, and video game design.

Critical thinking isn’t a skill that young adults can easily pick up. Critical thinking, like sailing, is a skill that needs to be cultivated through years of practice and challenges.

LFG is a rallying cry that stands for “let’s f&^king go!”

If kids are going to be prepared to live as capable adults, then LFG is how educators need to be able to approach their work.