There are times, when to maintain a neutral mindset during research, breaks are necessary for self-introspection. During twenty-eight years’ experience in military aviation, and twenty years in higher education, the main lesson learned is that observable problems are not the problem. They are the effect for which there are causes.
Students becoming terrorists have causes:
- Student learning environments and experiences for success. Negative learning environments.
- Information students receive does not prepare them to think critically and make correct choices.
- Forty-four percent of High School graduates unqualified to enter college.
- Fifty percent of college graduates feel unqualified for entry-level jobs. Wish they had taken math and science track.
- Severe Teacher Shortage: 100,000 qualified math and science teachers needed over the next decade!
- Underqualified teachers in low-income areas are a larger percentage than in high-income areas.
- Education building campuses for prestige, not education.
The above list does not address all the causes however, they are the main topics.
Student learning environments have become more unsafe places recently, requiring institution of preventive measures. This very fact causes students to feel unsafe and obviously impacts the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
The U.S. Department of Education: Administers multiple federal programs designed to improve school safety, address critical areas of need for improving the conditions for learning and school climate, and to improve access to systems of support for schools, such as mental health services, trauma, violence prevention, social emotional and behavioral learning, school climate, and school emergency management planning.
Primary School: Attacks that have occurred on school property or related primarily to school issues or events.
Secondary School: Attacks that have occurred on school property or related primarily to school issues or events.
Post-Secondary School: Attacks related to postsecondary schools, such as universities or colleges. These are attacks that occurred on school property, faculty or related primarily to school issues or events.
Education Week: Shadowy criminal gangs with sinister names like The Dark Overlord are terrorizing schools. They hack into district networks and then demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments, making threats of terrible consequences if schools do not agree to hand over the money.
Very Well Family: Comprehensive Sexuality Education is a program that starts in early childhood and continues through high school. It teaches that sexuality is a natural, normal part of healthy living and brings up age-appropriate sexuality topics.
Critical Race Theory: The Communist Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Critical race theory (CRT) has become a divisive ideology-based on race as a form of class conflict. It pits proponents and opponents against each other.
CRT: Has become a racially charged debate which is a misguided way to examine the inequalities in American society through the lens of racial injustice. Marxist-style revolutions based on race, ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people.
National Education Association (NEA): Education is political. When teaching about U.S. elections or politics, many educators will strive for neutrality. They may insist these discussions have no place in the classroom.
NEA: Adopted an agenda item stating, “It is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.” This is considered a socialist political propaganda approach by some, not neutral.
Political Corruption in the United States: There’s a lot of corruption associated with political machines, particularly though not exclusively in urban areas. The political machines provide jobs for supporters, who use their positions to generate illicit income for themselves and the party bosses.
Public Education is Political: School is a hazardous environment. Poor quality education, unhealthy environments, narcotics easily available, and sex crimes. U.S. schools rank very poorly in international testing with a science and math ranking of 37th while China ranks first. Even in the arts and humanities, U.S. students rank 25th.
National Institute on Drug Abuse: In 2021, provisional data from CDC estimate more than 107,000 people died of a drug overdose, with 75% of those deaths involving an opioid. The overall rise in overdose deaths is largely attributable to the proliferation in the drug supply of illicit fentanyl.
In-School Surveys for Drugs Prevalence trends by drug for 8th, 10th, and 12th Grade Students. People who reported multiple symptoms consistent with severe substance use disorder at age 18 exhibited two or more of these symptoms in adulthood according to a new analysis of a nationwide survey.
Sex Crimes: An analysis found that at least 135 teachers and teachers’ aides have been arrested in 41 states between January 1 and May 13, which works out to about an arrest a day on average. The vast majority of the arrested educators were men.
National Center for Education Statistics: It is apparent the environment and experiences students encounter are not friendly in many instances. In conjunction with the internal environment on campus, there is the external environment off campus. Annual Reports . and Information Staff.
Research.com: Forty (40) Student crime statistics for 2021/2022, analysis and predictions. Reported incidents of violence in schools over the past few years have left parents, students, and even educators to question how safe campuses really are.
The Squad: Four members of Congress representing themselves as progressive women of color may have much in common with student protestors. They may be the image that student protesters emulate, however, in a violent way.
Student Protests: Theft, robbery, rape, carjacking, arson, gang activity, use and sale of drugs and many more activities, may be a response to the perceived and real environment. The negative issues addressed above are abnormal in an advanced, enlightened society.
COVID-19: Education, the lingering effects of unfinished learning. U.S. states and districts have the opportunity to not only help students catch up on unfinished learning from the pandemic but also tackle long-standing historical inequities in education.
American Psychological Association: Students and others who are more open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization tend to:
- Feel angry, alienated or disenfranchised.
- Believe that their current political involvement does not give them the power to effect real change.
- Identify with perceived victims of the social injustice they are fighting.
- Feel the need to take action rather than just talking about the problem.
- Believe that engaging in violence against the state is not immoral.
- Have friends or family sympathetic to the cause.
- Believe that joining a movement offers social and psychological rewards such as adventure, camaraderie and a heightened sense of identity.
Terrorism and Schools: As terrorism evolves and as more youth embrace extremist ideologies, there is a growing need to include processes to assess, prepare, protect, mitigate, respond, and ultimately recover from terrorism-motivated incidents within district and school safety plans.
On a good note:
American Heart Association: The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act, which would reauthorize federal child nutrition programs and help guarantee that kids are not only fed but have access to the healthy meals they need to learn. The American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary organization focused on heart and brain health.