Are students at our school aware of current world events? How informed are they about what’s happening in the world?

Everyone knows that around the world, new things happen each day. Whether they are good or bad, it is important to be up to date with them due to various reasons.

When I interviewed 5 different students at our school and asked them about events that are currently happening, 4/5 of them said they had no idea most of them were occurring; I even got some replies such as: “That’s a country?” “Papua New Guinea.. is that in Africa?”. Here are some of the questions I asked:

“Did you see that a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea buried nearly 600 people in a village?”

“Did you see the news of that horrible attack Israel committed against Rafah, Palestine over the weekend?”

“Have you seen the news about protests occurring all over Europe?”

“Did you hear about the migrant crisis in New York City?”

As I mentioned before, some students have never even heard of some of these places.

Around the world, many things occur each day. From a new invention in South Korea to the deadly landslide in Papua New Guinea, to the wars raging in the Middle East. One must think: “Why should I care about any of them? They aren’t affecting my daily life at all…”, but they’ve got it all wrong. For our high school students being up to date with the current news can be very rewarding, and they may realize that they do affect them after all.

The reasons why our students should be keeping posted on our world events are many. For starters, many of our Pasco High students are of Hispanic/Latino descent, so events going on in Latin America might affect them after all. For example, I have a friend whose family resides in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, and on October 25th, 2023, a disaster of epic proportions occurred. Hurricane Otis, which was predicted to be just a tropical storm at landfall near Acapulco, intensified at a historic pace. The tropical storm turned into a monster Category 5 hurricane, in just 12 hours. The residents of the city had no prior warning due to the sudden intensification. My friend had no idea a hurricane had even hit until I mentioned it. Later that day, she went home and told her parents about the disaster in Acapulco, where they immediately tried to contact their family, where they got word that they were okay, but their apartment and property were gone. If this news hadn’t gotten to my friend, she says that they could have lost communication with them for months. To this day, communication services are still bad in some parts of Acapulco, where some residents are too poor to even be able to reach somewhere with proper communication.

That example is my own, but there are many more, and not only affecting our Hispanic community. Many more of our students don’t realize that their families are all over the world, and they also have their own lives going on, with events and news that affect them personally. While they may not be able to do anything about it, they can spread awareness and be able to understand just what is truly going on.

Another example of this is the current war in Israel and Palestine. Since it is so talked about, many students have an idea of what might be going on, but for them, many facts and details have been altered to make the side seem like the worst/better side.

When our students become well-informed on a situation or event, they not only learn new things, they open their minds to more. This needs to happen because it has great consequences for our school and our community.