Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Here’s the thing about school in the 21st century: It’s nothing like you probably remember it.
Your teacher’s on Facebook. Your homework’s online, where your parents can see. Bullying’s not limited to the hallways, but also on social media. You attend seminars about drugs you’ve only heard of in Miley Cyrus songs. Tragic school shootings seem to occur more frequently with each passing year. Politicians bicker over which school you’ll attend. A steady job is far from a guarantee after graduation. By the time you turn 25, your level of angst is such, it’s not uncommon to experience a “quarter-life crisis,” a feeling once reserved for people twice your age.
Indeed, today’s students are learning a lot—and only a fraction of it involves academics.
In trying to make sense of it all for those of us who grew up at a time when school was, well, different, we planned our annual education guide from a fresh perspective: the student’s. We polled teens about such things as math, music, and meth. We examined the impact that passing or failing can have on a grade-schooler’s social circle. We followed one transfer student making the journey from the Riverview Gardens School District to the Mehlville School District, asking her to help us cut past the wonky stuff and explain the experience in a way that only a 16-year-old could.
But we also let the adults speak. We spoke to Chris Nicastro, Missouri’s commissioner of education, about the state of our schools. We asked New City School head Thomas Hoerr to expound on the importance of grit. And we surveyed more than 200 institutions on enrollment, test scores, and more.
In reading the resulting feature, you’ll hopefully learn a thing or two about students in St. Louis. We certainly did.
