10 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
MN DAILY
MNDAILY.COM
Editorials & Opinions
COLUMN
EDITORIAL
Students should take more responsibility for questioning and changing society
Minnesota needs to try banning single-use plastics
Education and a vigilant society have the ability to help check and change society for good.
The State and the U of M should follow other U.S. cities that are regulating and banning single-use plastic.
L
ast fall, when orange leaves started to make their gentle tumble out of the trees, I visited the office of a favorite professor to discuss an assignment I was having JONATHAN ABABIY trouble with. I took columnist my place in the spare chair next to the door of his office and, after lifting some papers off the seat, he sat in the worn leather lounging chair next to his bookcase. We chatted for some time. The class we had together was a freshman seminar on the topic of higher education. I was doing most of the talking, explaining possible approaches to an essay prompt that was stumping me. After one of my proposals, the professor leaned back in the scholarly chair of his and gave me the kind of nod that only a professor who has spent years nestled deep in the stacks of a dusty library can give. He turned his face away from me and scanned
the wall of books to his right. He pulled out a blue course packet from an old class, then flipped through some pages until an essay titled “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin appeared somewhere in the middle of the packet he handed me. He said, “You need to read this.” I did read it, and it completely changed how I thought about education and what effect scribbling my professors’ words into notebooks – for 9 months, a year, four years – would have on me. In the essay, Baldwin demonstrates his brilliance by arguing that even though the societal purpose of education is to provide us a “social framework” that ensures the aims of society will be perpetuated, education can have a reverse, paradoxical effect. He writes, “the paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” We begin to see how we fit in the bigger picture – even if we aren’t in it at all and there’s someone pushing us out of it. In 1963, Baldwin was writing in a storm of a time. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X offered competing visions to a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Nuclear war loomed as Soviets loaded up the Cuban island with nuclear weapons. The possibility of an unfavorable result in the
Vietnam War began to enter the American consciousness. In retrospect, solutions or responses to many of the problems of Baldwin’s era seem common sense, but they came about as part of education’s paradoxical effect. The visionaries and change-makers of his era asked the questions no one else was. The paradox still exists in our time. What we learn in our classrooms still calls into question what we seem to regard as normal and fine in our society and on campus. As another year of school begins, we must stay aware and nourish education’s interrogative effect. Things still make little sense in America or on campus, just like in 1963. There is still so much that remains unjust, whether it be on campus or in our governments. Jailing children was a federal policy for much of 2018. The dates have changed, but much of the scenery remains. Baldwin wrote, “It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person.” Now, as our backpacks sag once more with books and our campus fills with people, his directive remains as true in 2018 as it did in 1963. Jonathan Ababiy welcomes comments at jababiy@mndaily.com.
EDITORIAL
Achievement gap is not prioritized in new school ratings Minnesota’s K-12 education system is one of the state’s largest investments. The new Minnesota school rating system offers a broader view of school performance than in the past but seems to de-emphasize the critical issue of the achievement gap between white students and students of color. For years, the achievement gap was a top concern among Minnesota educators and education policymakers at the Capitol, so an about face on this issue should be troubling to education stakeholders including the business community. Measuring the achievement gap won’t go away, but the new system calls on education officials to re-frame the issue to one of supporting the problem rather than calling attention to it. The new system will still measure test scores of different groups, like students of color and English language learners, but it won’t compare them to white student scores. It sounds like a “rebranding” of the issue that ultimately will soften the approach to solving it. Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius says the new rating system moves from a “shame-based punishment” system to one of “continuous improvement.” It’s also important to keep in mind that the state was required by federal law to change its evaluation approach based on the “Every Student Succeeds Act.” But in 2012, Minnesota had a goal of closing the achievement gap by half by 2017. That didn’t happen. In fact, the achievement gap hardly budged from 2012 to 2017. And there appears to be no such goal with the new measuring system. There has been better news on graduation rates, where achievement gaps between black students and white students narrowed by about 3 percent last year, but there remains an 18 percentage point difference between students of color and white students. The new “North Star” accountability system measures Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment test scores, improvement in test scores, progress in English Learning students in proficiency, graduation rates and regular attendance at school. Attendance should be a given that’s mostly controlled by parents, and it seems out of place as an academic performance measure. We all remember people who showed up to school, but didn’t get much out of it. The new system also seems to create more support for schools at varying levels of success and rewards schools for high achievement by giving them a badge for their website. Education leaders say the new North Star system was a product of listening sessions around the state from various stakeholder groups, including the 11 Native American sovereign communities. The education leaders say the new assessment also changes a previously “misguided” heavy focus on test scores and as schools move away from that fixation all students will have broader opportunities for a more well-rounded education. That’s all well and good, but it seems proficiency in math, reading and sciences will continue to be critical to the workforce of the future. Much of that workforce, we know, will be people of color and new immigrants. Minnesota’s Constitution calls for an equal education for all and that doesn’t seem to be kept in mind as we de-emphasize the achievement gap. We owe it to students of color to support their growth in achieving competitive skills in an increasingly competitive workforce and we should be able to tell the taxpayers how their $15 billion a year is achieving that. Editor’s Note: This editorial was originally published in the Mankato Free Press.
Robert McGrady welcomes comments at rmcgrady@mndaily.com.
COLUMN
Recording accurate mass shooting and disaster statistics Misrepresenting statistics related gun violence can lead to governmental inaction.
O
n April 20, 1999, the Columbine High School shooting became the deadliest in U.S. history thus far when two shooters claimed UMA VENKATA the lives of 13 people columnist and then their own, injuring 23 more. Since then, shootings and their death tolls being broadcast by the news cycle have become commonplace. The deadliest mass shooting to date has been the Las Vegas concert shooting on Oct. 1, 2017, killing 58 and injuring nearly 500. There are plenty of news outlets covering shootings. But ProPublica’s Lois Beckett pointed out in a 2015 column that the complication of coverage comes from which type of shooting they are. That year, 355 mass shootings were reported by The Washington Post, a figure that, according to Beckett, comes from “a crowdsourced Reddit initiative that gathers media reports of shootings in which four or more people were shot.” The number 355 has been refuted by various other news outlets because it includes instances other than indiscriminate shooting sprees. These instances, which conventionally aren’t counted as mass shootings, can be robberies, gang fights or point-blank murders. The number of dead victims to shootings can also increase over time because victims can die of wound complications. The Redditors are right — documenting deaths due to gun violence is absolutely necessary and should be followed more closely. A reliable and easily accessible database — which is instinctively the responsibility of a newspaper — should make the public aware of all lives lost to gun violence, including
more descriptive names for the circumstances of the deaths. But presenting a gang fight as a mass shooting is arguably misleading because its motives and reasons are entirely different. When we miscategorize deaths like that, we point ourselves in the wrong direction in pursuit of a solution. Nebulous reports of death are not restricted to guns — two months after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico, the island’s government reported 64 dead on Dec. 9, 2017. But as of Aug. 29, 2018, the official deathtoll estimate had risen to 2,975. To put that into perspective: around 1,800 people in New Orleans died due to Hurricane Katrina, and around 2,977 people died due to the attacks on September 11, 2001. The reason for documenting death is important. Documenting deaths tells us exactly which problems we need to solve. For Puerto Rico or New Orleans, where the death toll and the wealth of the local community had an inverse relationship, the problem is usually solved by allocating aid and proper evacuation prior to the natural disaster. Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina, maintains that if we were able to evacuate the residents the way he wanted, there would have been no such death toll. But government drags its feet to supply the aid because of the sheer money it requires. The same goes for death counts. We need to solve the problem by limiting access to guns, as well as finding resources — yes, money — to protect and improve the lives of our citizens who die as a result of gun violence. My liberty ends where it impedes on the life of my neighbors. My tax dollars should go toward helping them, not just a select few.
Uma Venkata welcomes comments at uvenkata@mndaily.com.
Minneapolis tends to be a consumerfriendly city. Compared to its large urban counterparts, the city ranks as the most bikeable, the second healthiest and the fourth most vegan-friendly in the nation. Not only does the city care for the health and well-being of its residents, but being environmentally friendly should be a top priority for such a progressive metropolitan area. However, when it comes to implementing policies on single-use plastic, Minneapolis sure has its work cut out for itself. Around two years ago, an ordinance banning plastic bags was passed in Minneapolis but not put into effect due to a budget bill signed by Gov. Mark Dayton that prohibits cities from banning any type of bag. Adding to the questionable disagreement, one year ago the City Council declined to vote on an ordinance implementing a 5 cent plastic bag fee. Though city officials seem to be against implementing environmental policies, Andrea Siegel, leader of No Straws of Minneapolis, believes that approaching businesses with the damaging facts about straws will create change. While utilizing a single plastic straw may not seem detrimental to the environment, it’s been estimated that 500 million straws are used and then thrown away each day. This makes straws the 7th largest category of waste, following other plastic items such as water bottles, plastic bags and plastic utensils. The movement to ban plastic straws has been rapidly gaining attention, and large cities such as Seattle and Miami have already taken action. Local Minneapolis businesses are already on board with the movement, with many implementing their own policies. While consumers at First Avenue can request a straw with their beverage, drinks are no longer automatically served with them. HopCat, a Minneapolis bar, now serves compostable straws, which are designed to break down quickly and turn into soil mere months later. If Minneapolis were to implement a plastic straw ban across the city, there would be a significant impact on the University of Minnesota campus. For example, the University has 12 coffee shops spanning throughout campus, including three Starbucks. While Starbucks has vowed to remove all plastic straw use from their stores by 2020, the shops are still using plastic straws in the meantime, creating an immense amount of irreparable environmental damage. To put the amount of harm in perspective, 500 million straws is enough to completely fill over 125 school buses every day, which is nearly 47,000 buses per year. Among these startling statistics is the fact that each American is estimated to use an average of 1.6 straws every day. While it’s important to realize that not all straws can be banned, as near perfect conformity presents difficulties for some people with disabilities who may need to use straws, Minneapolis and local businesses should consider using alternatives, such as paper or compostable straws. The City should quickly follow the footsteps of its counterparts and begin with banning the use of plastic straws. Furthermore, Minneapolis and other cities need to expand their focus to the banning of all single-use plastic items. EDITORIALS & OPINIONS DEPARTMENT Editorials represent the voice of the Minnesota Daily as an institution and are prepared by the editorial board. SHARE YOUR VIEWS The Minnesota Daily welcomes letters and guest columns from readers. All letters must include the writer’s name, address and phone number for verification. The Daily reserves the right to edit all letters for style, space, libel and grammar. Letters to the editor should be no more than 500 words in length. Guest columns should be approximately 350 words. The Daily reserves the right to print any submission as a letter or guest column. Submission does not guarantee publication.
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