by Caitlin Ferry
The Fifty States of High School is my favorite television show. Each state is represented by a different actor, so they experience those four pivotal years of high school differently. California is an extroverted male with a bougie taste for handbags and a silicon touch for computers. He spends his free time as a social media influencer promoting a particular purple shampoo. Kentucky embodies its rolling hills and bluegrass via a plump pale girl. With skin like the fallen winter snow and long brown hair that swishes in the hallway, she eagerly trots to her welding class.
South Carolina, however, is the stereotypical dumb blonde. As beautiful as she is, with her river-wavy hair and slender Palmetto tree figure, she’s dumber than a box of rocks. Her sun-kissed cheeks derive from too much time spent on Dirty Myrtle’s coast. South Carolina is a party girl who's on the road to traffic court because she’s earned one too many speeding tickets while on her way to Cookout at midnight. Her Confederate ancestors who seceded from the union gave her the lofty confidence and determination to achieve in school, but the school system failed South Carolina. They put her in a box.
The problem isn’t this sitcom script of my imagination, but rather the fact it is the current state of our beloved “South Cackalacky.” South Carolina has put its students in a box. The 2023 South Carolina Transparency and Integrity in Education Act established so-called learning standards in the biased eyes of the South Carolina Department of Education. The truth? The students of South Carolina are in a dangerous, cold, sound-proof box—with a textbook, of course. The use of textbooks in lieu of educators in English and social studies classes is silencing both students and teachers. The monotonous task of textbook flipping is like the “doom scrolling” of education: an endless abyss of worthless content. Teaching from the book is sparking fear within many teachers, due to the consequences of defiance, and what is that teaching students? To fear igniting change? More importantly, the act is diminishing South Carolina’s many astounding teachers’ passion and creativity in the classroom. Now, the creativity and freedom of a teacher’s work are being scrutinized for leading kids “outside of the box.”
Above all else, textbook teaching is conditioning students to that box; it is teaching them to settle. Students are now being taught that they can do the bare minimum and expect to succeed. It is this backwards thinking that places South Carolina 42nd nationally for education, according to U.S. News & World Report. Her delusions are why my high school had to create the slogan, “Strive for 85,” in hopes of increasing graduation rates. As spring came, more seniors began to fail or drop out. The South Carolina Transparency and Integrity in Education Act will only magnify the struggles many South Carolina high school students face in their postgraduate institutions, such as a deflated work effort or lack of flexibility. They have never been held to a high-enough academic standard. Students in “college prep” classes are especially at risk of the effects of textbook teaching, as they are historically overlooked by teachers who favor Honors and Advanced Placement students.
The notorious success of AP classes does not come from textbook teaching. My high school career has always consisted of AP teachers who go beyond the box. Last year, my AP United States History teacher flooded the class with annoying and seemingly unnecessary “fun facts” about anything from the Aztecs to al-Qaeda. At the time, it was hard to see the relevance of his antics, but it all came to fruition when I opened the College Board AP exam. His daily quizzes, which frequently included those seemingly minute details, kept the class immersed in his lectures and may have accounted for his 93 percent AP exam passing rate. Passion is what keeps students engaged in their education and future. The problem is that more students are taking the easy way out and hitting the books. The South Carolina Department of Education is putting the state’s future and that of our country at risk of failure. She has the power to change future minds and lives, but she needs to do it for the better.
On the next season of The 50 States of High School, we as students and teachers have the chance to rewrite the script. We can ensure South Carolina always makes the honor roll and that she takes plenty of AP classes. We can rekindle her scorned passion for learning and take her out of that traditional, yet antiquated box.
About Caitlin Ferry, second place winner
Caitlin Joanne Ferry is a senior at North Myrtle Beach High School, where Catherine Threatt was her 11th grade AP Language and Composition teacher. The daughter of Mary-Fran and Ross Ferry, Caitlin volunteers with the Lions and Rotary clubs and enjoys golf, travel, and concerts. She plans to attend the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina and pursue a career in law.