School, Social Media Become Outlets for Student Political Viewpoints

Does politics really go deeply enough to affect high school students?

With the recent presidential election in 2024 between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, students at Fleetwood Area High school have had a burst of debates and conversations about Trump’s second win. People are either ecstatic about his victory or people are fearing for what is to come in the future.

However, when looking at the perspective of teachers, sometimes these political debates can lose meaning if it becomes too aggressive and results in unconstructive arguments.

Teachers at the high school encourage students to look at politics from an educational point of view if it is being discussed at school.

“I do encourage students to think about situations that sometimes lean toward politics. When we study literature that is relevant to the situation, I will bring it up,” Karen Sahaydak, who teaches English to all grade levels, said.

“I tend to let students talk it out themselves. However, I will engage when it seems that one (or both sides) are getting a little too intense. I will also discuss items when students ask me a direct question,” Ed Carr, who teaches ninth and twelfth grade social studies, said.

Teachers have also shared events that happened around election time in their daily classes.

“The day before, I had a student ask me who I intended to vote for. I told him voting is a personal thing and that I don’t tell people who I intend to vote for, but I had done my research ahead and knew who I would be voting for,” Sahaydak said.

“It seems to take an uptick in intensity anytime it’s an election year (every four years). It does seem that it’s been more intense with each election over the years,” Todd Driesbach, who teaches mostly ninth grade science classes, said.

There have also been expressed opinions on the current political environment that students are growing up in. Social media has played a role in influencing people’s political opinions and what that means to them, as well as to people’s relationships around them.

“Americans live in what some describe as a post-truth world, where there is no shared sense of reality,” Sean Gaston, who teaches electives to all grade levels, said. “It makes it very difficult to agree on things with people in the political sphere when there’s no agreed upon starting point.”

“For example, if I’m to believe that my political opponents are evil and ‘the devil’, why would I ever want to work with people like that? It used to not work that way–Before, you could call up your buddies that are Democratic, independent, or Republican, and that’s not the world we have anymore,” Gaston said.

“I feel people’s opinions and attitudes on  social media have given students who follow social media poor examples to follow. When we bad mouth one another because of a political belief, it sets a very poor example for our youth,” Sahaydak says. “They feel they can attack someone when that person doesn’t believe the same thing as they do, just like the comments on social media do.”