I just finished reading The New York Times Magazine article, "America's Children are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?" Here's What I Have to Say About That...
Welcome to the Great Educational Awakening, NYT!
I was scrolling on my phone early this morning while still in bed (don’t judge me) and this article from The New York Times Magazine, “America’s Children are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? From A.D.H.D. to anxiety, disorders have risen as the expectations of childhood have changed.” was in my feed. (Thank you, algorithm Gods. I feel seen.) Nothing can get me out of bed faster than an article in a well-read publication that is (potentially) saying what I have been saying for the past two decades! So, I opened my laptop, agreed to pay the enticing rate of $1 a week for the next few months to access all the NYT’s offerings, and began reading every word of Jia Lynn Yang’s piece.
I was holding my breath.
Was she going to strike hard or would she create excuses? Would she call out the political spectrum or would she kowtow to one side? Would she dare suggest that maybe we’ve become obsessed with labels and are doing more harm than good by diagnosing so many children so they can “function” in school?!
Why does this matter? Why should any of us care what the NYT says or doesn’t say?
Fair questions.
And here’s why it matters to me: when a more mainstream publication questions a sacred cow (public school) it is a signal that something in the collective consciousness is stirring.
When the same publication also questions the rise in mental health disorders and diagnoses in children, including the side effects of these diagnoses, the tide is turning.
And when enough people are brave enough to ask questions about our institutions, and, more importantly, brave enough to honor the answers they find, we eventually reach critical mass and societal change becomes highly likely if not inevitable.
If the NYT’s article gets enough people to recognize how necessary change is in this moment in time, the next generation of children could experience a childhood more aligned with their developmental needs. That is something I can get behind.
Societal Change Is Like A Periennial…It Sleeps, It Creeps, then It Leaps
In the 1960s, communication scholar Everett Rogers synthesized research on how new ideas, practices, or technologies spread through society and developed the theory of Diffusion of Innovation (DOI). The rate at which something becomes part of society depends on multiple factors, but when an idea spreads from innovators, to early adopters to early and late majorities, then diffusion (social change) is said to occur.
When we started homeschooling in 2007, only 2.9% of the K-12 population was homeschooling. According to Rogers’ theory, we would be considered innovators/early adopters. People in this category are sometimes called things like fringe, counter-cultural, and yes, even weird. I prefer forward-thinking rebel, but that’s a post for another time. However, if you combine the data of all children enrolled in educational options other than public school you’re looking at roughly 12-13% of the K-12 population, or in DOI terms, “early adopters”. Rogers’ framework suggests that when adoption of ideas moves beyond the innovators and early adopters, roughly over 16% of the population, then a critical mass has formed and the potential for mainstream adoption occurs.
In terms of the public school exodus, if current trends persist, we’ll see 17-20% of students attending educational options other than brick-and-morter public schools in the coming years. Because 2025 data isn’t officially available, we may already be in that range.
The New York Times Magazine piece is a cultural harbinger. As more and more parents question the status quo and then remove their children from public schools, enrollment will eventually fall past the point of small fixes. Our politicians and school boards will be forced to reckon with a school model that not only goes against healthy child development, but actively harms children in many ways.
As Yang concluded in her piece,
By turning childhood into a thing that can be measured, adults have managed to impose their greatest fears of failure onto the youngest among us. Each child who strays from our standards becomes a potential medical mystery to be solved, with more tests to take, more metrics to assess. The only thing that seems to consistently evade the detectives is the world around that child — the one made by the grown-ups.
Exactly.
Adults created the problems and now, many adults are clearly taking steps to move away from a system that is not working for their child (and hasn’t for many children for years). With the NYT talking about the issues our children face, maybe the Great Educational Awakening will finally go mainstream and schools of the future will look more like schools of the past—more nature, more play, less testing, and less teacher burn-out and stress.
~Missy