Dear School Administrators,

I am writing to you to express my concern about the way certain sensitive topics are taught and learned about in schools across the country. As a student who has experienced firsthand the impact of mental health issues, it scares me when extremely important topics such as suicide and violence prevention are reduced to the contents of 30-minute mandatory assemblies. And I realize that the problem isn’t that educators don’t care about these issues; it’s that they are forced to prioritize the neutrality of discussions around them above all else. Although it can be difficult to balance creating meaningful educational experiences with accurately representing controversial topics, it is imperative that students such as myself are educated fully and deeply about these sensitive topics in order to create empathetic and nuanced perspectives in future leaders. 

In my experience at school, there seems to be a common idea held by educators that if a topic is presented completely neutrally to students, it allows them to understand it better because they can form their own opinions about it. This is partially true; students taking a more active role in their learning definitely helps them understand a topic better. But the idea of prioritizing the neutrality of a discussion over everything else ultimately limits our learning. By only presenting a controversial topic from a single neutral perspective, it doesn’t allow students to see its full breadth. For example, students learning about mental health treatment should be taught about psychiatric hospitals, commonly known as psych wards. Often mental health education is focused on the medical side of treatment, so students might be introduced to this issue from a doctor’s perspective. But in order to fully understand the benefits, drawbacks, and other nuances of psych wards, we need to learn about it from multiple perspectives. Having patient testimony alongside doctors’ presents a three dimensional image of this issue and allows us to effectively understand and sympathize with everyone involved. And, by showing students multiple perspectives, they can more effectively come to their own conclusions about the issue by being more informed. 

A separate issue with this emphasis on neutrality is the removal of human experience from incredibly human issues. For example, educating about depression using only facts and definitions cannot accurately portray the true feeling of depression to students who have never experienced it. Instead, educators should include human testimony, even if it is potentially biased, for students to be able to accurately understand this issue. By learning about issues like depression from a human perspective, we can better empathize with friends or classmates experiencing this issue, and have a better reference for our own feelings of sadness or loss. In order to create empathetic leaders tomorrow, we must create impactful lessons today. 

I realize that I’ve gone this whole essay without properly addressing the reason why educators are afraid to present controversial topics anything other than neutrally. I know that often concerned parents will get teachers in trouble for exposing their child to potentially upsetting or disturbing issues. To parents: it is your responsibility to protect their child. In some cases this means withholding information, but in others it necessitates sharing it. Although it can be difficult to educate students about these topics with engaging and nuanced methods, it is imperative that educators prioritize student learning over the neutrality of the perspectives they present in order to create empathetic future leaders. 

Sincerely,

A Concerned Student