Cowardly Teen Offspring of Liberals Are Protesting In-Class Presentations

[Democrats, the party of Let's pretend]

For many middle- and high-school students, giving an in-class
presentation was a rite of passage. Teachers would call up
students, one by one, to present their work in front of the
class and, though it was often nerve-racking, many people claim
it helped turn them into more confident public speakers.

“Coming from somebody with severe anxiety, having somebody force
me to do a public presentation was the best idea to happen in my
life,” one woman recently tweeted. According to a recent survey
by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, oral
communication is one of the most sought-after skills in the
workplace, with over 90 percent of hiring managers saying it’s
important. Some educators also credit in-class presentations
with building essential leadership skills and increasing
students’ confidence and understanding of material.

But in the past few years, students have started calling out in-
class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety,
demanding that teachers offer alternative options. This week, a
tweet posted by a 15-year-old high-school student declaring
“Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give
them a choice not to” garnered more than 130,000 retweets and
nearly half a million likes. A similar sentiment tweeted in
January also racked up thousands of likes and retweets. And
teachers are listening.

|???????????|
stop forcing students
to present in front of the
class and give them a
choice not to

|___________|
\ (•?•) /
\ /
---
| |

— leen (@softedhearts) September 8, 2018
Teachers, please stop forcing students to present in front of
the class & raise their hand in exchange for a good grade.
Anxiety is real.

— amberlicious. ?? (@DAMNBlEBERS) January 30, 2017
Students who support abolishing in-class presentations argue
that forcing students with anxiety to present in front of their
peers is not only unfair because they are bound to underperform
and receive a lower grade, but it can also cause long-term
stress and harm.

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“Nobody should be forced to do something that makes them
uncomfortable,” says Ula, a 14-year-old in eighth grade, who,
like all students quoted, asked to be referred to only by her
first name. “Even though speaking in front of class is supposed
to build your confidence and it’s part of your schoolwork, I
think if a student is really unsettled and anxious because of it
you should probably make it something less stressful. School
isn’t something a student should fear.”

“It feels like presentations are often more graded on delivery
when some people can’t help not being able to deliver it well,
even if the content is the best presentation ever,” says
Bennett, a 15-year-old in Massachusetts who strongly agrees with
the idea that teachers should offer alternative options for
students. “Teachers grade on public speaking which people who
have anxiety can’t be great at.”

“I get that teachers are trying to get students out of their
comfort zone, but it’s not good for teachers to force them to do
that,” says Henry, a 15-year-old also in Massachusetts.

To the thousands of teens who support the effort to do away with
in-class presentations (at least enough to like a tweet about
it), anxiety is no small issue. Students said they understood
why older people might tell them to “suck it up,” but that doing
so was unproductive. Some responses to the most recent viral
tweet, though, noted that giving a presentation in spite of
anxiety might reduce a student’s fear of public speaking.

Just so you know, “Exposure therapy” is commonly used amongst
psychologist as a behavior therapy to help treat anxiety
disorder. So your point about “ it can’t be cured facing your
fears.” Is just false.

— Mightykeef (@MightyKeef) September 10, 2018
Being a high schooler in 2018 is more stressful than ever.
Academic demands on students are high, kids participate in more
extracurricular activities than in the past, and they are
saddled with extra hours of homework.

“Kids doing sports don’t get home till 7:00 p.m. I get home at
5:30 p.m. tonight but it’s going to get worse,” Bennett says.
“Kids ... can’t be holed up in their room every night till 1:00
a.m. finishing homework on their third Red Bull.” These
stressors and more have led to an unprecedented level of anxiety
in their generation. Anxiety is increasing at a faster rate than
depression as the leading mental-health issue affecting
teenagers, a recent study in the Journal of Developmental and
Behavioral Pediatrics found. Throwing things like in-class
presentations on top of other stressors kids are dealing with,
teens say, can be unbearable.

“Teachers think it’s just a fear,” says Jess, a 16-year-old in
New Jersey. “We’ll skip school. I’ve skipped school a lot of
times if I had to present. Even if a teacher lets me present
alone in front of them I still wouldn’t because that’s how nerve-
racking it is,” she said.

These students want more options. They say that every student
has unique strengths and abilities and that they should be
allowed to present their work in ways that speak to those
strengths. This might mean presenting alone in front of the
teacher, or choosing between several alternatives like producing
a piece of art or an essay for private judgment instead of
presenting their work orally.

“The resounding theory that education is holding on to right now
is the idea of multiple intelligences,” says Travis Grandt, a
high-school history teacher in Colorado who says he tries to
accommodate students with special needs, including anxiety.
“There [are] a lot of ways for kids to present information. It
doesn’t have to be through a formal presentation.”

Joe Giordano, a high-school teacher in Baltimore, says that he’s
also sympathetic to the movement away from mandatory in-class
presentations. As an art teacher, he hosts “crit” sessions where
students’ work is critiqued. He always gives the teenagers a
choice as to whether or not they want to speak about their own
work.

“It kind of irks me when I see a lot of other teachers say, ‘But
we have to get them up there.’ These kids are living under more
stressful situations than I did as a student. Their anxiety runs
pretty high,” he said. “I know we should put them in
uncomfortable situations, but if they suffer from anxiety
they’re already in an uncomfortable situation. As a teacher I
try to show compassion. It’s not about being a drill instructor.”

Kathleen Carver, a high-school history teacher in Texas, says
teaching has changed since the days when she grew up. “I think
in this day and age there [are] different pressures. We expect
different things from our students,” she said. “We’re in a day
and age where we have to acknowledge our students’ feelings. I
have to listen to them and hear their feedback and respond to
that. That’s how I can be a more effective teacher. If I ignored
their feelings I don’t think they would like me or my class or
walk away learning things.”

Those campaigning against in-class presentations said that it
was important to distinguish between students with actual
diagnosable anxiety disorders and those who might just want to
get out of the assignment. Addie, a 16-year-old in New York,
said that schools like hers already make accommodations for
students with certain learning issues to get extra time on
tests. She thinks similar processes could be put in place for
students with public-speaking anxiety. “I think it’s important
these accommodations are accessible, but that they’re also given
to those who are need it instead of those who just say they
don’t want to present,” she said. “There’s a big difference
between nervousness and anxiety.”

Students who have been successful in the campaign to end in-
class presentations credit social media. Unlike previous
generations, high schoolers today are able to have a direct
impact on their educational system by having their voices heard
en masse online. Teenagers, most of whom are extremely adept at
social media, say that platforms like Twitter and Instagram have
allowed them to meet more kids at other schools and see how
other school districts run things. They can then wage campaigns
for changes at their own school, sometimes partnering with teens
in other districts to make their voice louder.

Henry said that he’s seen the effects of these types of
campaigns firsthand. This year his district shifted the school
start time an hour and fifteen minutes later, something he and
his fellow students campaigned for aggressively on social media,
which he believes played a role in the decision. High-school
students across the country have also waged social-media
campaigns against discriminatory dress codes, excessive
homework, and, most notably, to advocate for gun-control
policies on campus. “Teens view social media as a platform to
make changes,” Carver says.

Part of why students feel social media is such a powerful
mechanism for changing education is because so many teachers are
on these platforms. Nicholas Ferroni, a high-school teacher in
New Jersey, said that “a lot of teachers use social media as a
great way to learn methodologies.”

“Instead of trying to go to a school-board meeting with a bunch
of adults in suits—that’s how it was—you can just talk to
everyone directly,” said Addie. “We don’t have to do all that
stuff formally. We can go online and say what we want to say and
people have to listen to us.” “I think social media is a great
way to reach educators,” said Bennett.

But when it comes to abolishing in-class presentations, not
everyone is convinced.

“We need to stop preaching to get rid of public speaking and we
need to start preaching for better mental health support and
more accessibility alternatives for students who are unable to
complete presentations/classwork/etc due to health reasons,” one
man tweeted.

Some educators agree. “My thoughts are that we are in the
business of preparing students for college, career, and civic
life. Public speaking is a piece of that preparation,” says Ryan
Jones, a high-school history teacher in Connecticut. “Now, some
kids (many) are deathly afraid to do it, but pushing outside of
comfort zones is also a big part of what we do.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/teens-
think-they-shouldnt-have-to-speak-in-front-of-the-class/570061/