Opinion: Schools need stricter cell phone policies
Phones in schools has been an ongoing debate, and I wanted to address the topic based on how it has affected me. While phones can be incredibly beneficial, they are extremely distracting, as I have found and many others. They disrupt classroom focus and thus I believe they should be limited in schools in order to improve productivity and interpersonal relationships.
Opinion: American high schools should require geography
Virtually every high school in the United States requires history or some form of social studies, but geography is often overlooked. Knowledge of geography is a vital skill that helps create better critical thinkers and more informed voters and global citizens; the stereotype that Americans do not know geography often holds true, and I think this has real-world ramifications of how we interact with each other and on a national level.
Opinion: Girls clothing perpetuates harmful narratives
Stereotypes on how girls should look an act are quite common from a young age. Growing movements to change this have had a lot of success, but girls clothing is significantly smaller or shorter than boys clothing from a young age, even though their bodies being virtually the same. believe this has underlying messages about the structure of our society and things we hold important that I wanted to explore.
Opinion: Technology should not replace all jobs
The use of technology and artificial intelligence in the workplace are increasingly debatable topics. While they are efficient in replacing some tasks that can be accomplished more effective technologically, I believe entire widespread use of technology in places like restaurants, as opposed to human servers, has negative social ramifications in terms of jobs and basic interactions shown to improve our mental health.
Opinion: Mental health resources should not be the only solution
As people push for gun control legislation, there is pushback that we should instead focus on mental health treatment in schools which will help potential shooters. I believe that while mental health treatment can be effective, it should not be the only solution, because the bottom line is, if guns were more controlled, the people needing this treatment would not have access to them in the first place.
Opinion: Politicians need a middle ground to fix climate change
Climate change is a highly debatable topic in the United States and globally, with certain politicians or political parties unwilling to make changes on both sides. Thus, I think both sides need to come to some sort of agreement or compromise, because any steps in the direction of greener practices are better than no progress at all. No solution is going to be perfect, but some sort of action needs to be taken.