Educating Inner-City Students in a Post Coronavirus World

The Coronavirus has finally garnered mainstream attention. Because of this we would assume that a few of our longstanding traditions may be finally coming to an end. Most notably, onsite working for digital companies and the handshake greeting. Digital companies are forced to have their employees work from home and companies will soon learn that remote work may save money and it may also increase their staff’s productivity. And handshakes? They are gross and have always been gross. I vividly remember being on a class trip and watching my 5th grade teacher leave the bathroom without washing his hands to then go shake another chaperon’s hand moments after. Since then I have always had overwhelming feelings of anxiety when shaking a stranger’s hand. So can we agree to stop shaking hands, forever? We hope so.

But there is one tradition that seems to be coming to an end and this tradition is more important than both handshakes and onsite work. The traditional public k-12 education system seems to be ineffective in today’s information age and we need to take action as soon as possible. Below we explain our thoughts of the traditional education system and what we think the future of education will look like in a post Coronavirus world. We break it down into three sections; our claim, our problem, and our future.

I. Our Claim: Traditional public funded education does not prepare students for the real worl

II. Our Problem: Student loan debt is 2 trillion dollars because graduates can not afford to pay their loans

III. Our Future: Less teachers, more mentors, and more software

Part I — Our Claim

In the last 30 years we have experienced a severe decline in our public education system. To measure this decline we are looking at the funds that have been invested in public education, our global ranking in public education, and the inability to match curricula to student’s abilities, and public education’s relationship with the always evolving job market.

After the 2008 financial crisis many countries made large investments in public education in efforts to produce highly educated citizens that can fulfill jobs of the new economy and produce enough tax revenue to support government services. From 2010–2014 education spending rose 27 percent in Portugal, 32 percent in the United Kingdom, 36 percent in Israel, and 76 percent in Turkey. During this same period education spending in America decreased by 4%. And in 2015 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) released their results from their study which measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. In the study the U.S. ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. This ranking is unimpressive knowing that we ranked as high as third in both of these categories in the sixties.

In 1918 all states in America finally agreed to require all children to obtain at least an elementary school education. And as media, art, and technology continues to revolutionize our culture, our public education curriculum has remained stagnant. Most people agree that reading, writing, and math are important. But there are many critics like us who question if learning the name of Christopher Columbus’s boat is more important than learning how to file your taxes or if learning about the cirrus cloud is more important than learning how to survive in an emergency. In most cases, inner city kids lack the adequate guidance needed to prepare them for the real world. We think the traditional public education system’s approach to student development exacerbates this problem by wasting student’s energetic youth on memorizing useless facts. This often leads students to making uneducated decisions about their future; decisions like taking $250,000 out in loans to study Art History in college. There is no shade towards Art History majors, we just wonder if that experience is worth $250,000.

Part II — Our Problem

Both public and private colleges have drastically risen tuition and fees every decade and they have been able to comfortably do so for these three reasons:

1. They know that higher education is considered a necessity in order to obtain “success” in our society. To become “successful” students must borrow money from private lenders and the federal government to cover the cost.
2. The US government is the largest student loan lender and their loans are guaranteed.
3. For many private schools, their goals are to increase their profit. Who can argue with any for profit business that is increasing their prices as demand increases? That’s how capitalism works, right?

Many inner city students see college as their only option to escape poverty. But the reality is that nearly 90% of black students graduate with student loan debt. This means they are more poor when they leave college compared to when they entered. Black students are not the only students in inner cities but they are the most stagnant. It seems like the goal of a modern day education system should not be to simply educate inner city students but rather help lift these students out of poverty and to increase their happiness.

Part III — Our Future

Today’s teachers are being asked to do more than to just prepare students academically. They are being asked to be understanding, nurturing, and in some cases they are also being asked by parents to be mentors to students. This makes life more difficult for teachers who only make $45,000 a year and have their own families to teach, nurture, and mentor. Without having an understanding of a teacher’s life it will be easy to blame them for students declining academic performances over the last few decades. But what if the traditional teacher’s job description is antiquated and needs to be updated? If we agree that reading, writing, and math are the most important subjects in school we have to be open to studies that suggest that learning math, comprehension, and writing are more effective online because it is more organized and there are less distractions. So the question arises, do we need as many teachers as we currently have today? We think the answer is no. Many schools should consider replacing some teachers with online programs and offer in person sessions with skilled tutors if students need in person assistance. Schools could then hire professionals to teach more electives like yoga, taxes, meditation, entrepreneurship, nutritionist, and other skills to help them prepare for the real world.

To replace the understanding, nurturing, and mentorship that teachers offer, schools should consider starting in house therapy sessions and an in house mentorship program. This would require them to find therapists that are trained to work with kids and finding professionals in their network to take on the role as mentors in their student’s lives. Here are some important mentoring statistics and information from youthmentor.org:

• Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class.
• Youth who meet regularly with their mentors are 46% less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs and 27% less likely to start drinking.
• Mentoring reduces “depression symptoms” and increases “social acceptance, academic attitudes and grades.”

We at The Blast App Inc are creating software to help students in a post Coronavirus world. We are working on our latest product called The Mentor App. The Mentor App is a modern mentorship platform that empowers mentees, engages mentors, and equips schools with the tools needed for students to succeed; no matter their backgrounds. Mentorship has the ability to empower children from all backgrounds to pursue their dreams, regardless of the zip code they were born into. However, the traditional face-to-face mentorship was developed more than 100 years ago, and is currently outdated. On average, it takes $1,696 per match (source: mentor.org) for in person mentoring to be successful — so the mentorship model needs a revamped digital solution that can provide an affordable, accessible, scalable, and safe platform for mentees, mentors, and schools. This is why we developed The Mentor App.

Check us out: www.thementor.app