♪ (upbeat techno intro) ♪
- (React) How would you describe your learning experience
throughout school-- elementary to high school?
Was it fun? Was it exciting? Was it interesting?
- NO to all of the above! No! - Because I was raised by
an immigrant family-- they came from the Philippines--
they taught me two languages at once.
So, I was dumb for the longest time.
- High school was awful just because I had moved
across the country, and then it was a big transition.
- (React) Okay, so what were your favorite subjects
and what were your least favorite subjects?
- I think math was my favorite subject.
- I'm HORRIBLE at math! - I don't like math.
- My very least favorite subject was math,
but that's a lot of people's. - (React) If you could change
one thing about your education, what would it be?
- More life skill courses, like how to do your taxes.
- I would say no homework definitely. - I would change how
they teach us about Black history. They only teach us
what they wanna teach us. We only know about the basics,
like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.
- (React) We're gonna show you videos that highlight what education
was like years ago. - Okay.
- (React) And then, we're gonna also show you videos of what education
is like in more recent years across various subjects.
And you're gonna react to how similar or how different
to your own educational experience these curriculums are.
- This is great! How fun!
- (voice-over) Now, listen up. My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us
Nine Pizzas. Ooh, yum. - This is very busy.
- (voice-over) If you were in elementary school before 2006,
there's a good chance you had to memorize something
similar to that sentence. This mnemonic device...
- I don't even remember learning about the solar system.
- (voice-over) ...order of the planets in our solar system:
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, also pronounced "your anus."
Yeah, you can't hide from it either way.
- Hehehehe. - (voice-over) And finally,
Neptune and Pluto. - Neptune and Pluto.
Pluto should still be a planet. - (React) When you were growing up,
did you learn that Pluto was a planet? - Oh, absolutely.
- I was part of the change, so I had both.
- The only thing I remember them saying
is that Pluto is no longer considered a planet.
- It was like a dwarf planet. - I don't even remember
memorizing the planets. I'm sure we did.
I cheated a lot. - (React, aghast) Sharon!
Let's look at what kids are learning these days.
- (voice-over) Now, if you're currently in elementary school,
you might be saying, "Wait, there were nine planets?"
before going back to playing Fortnite GO or whatever kids
are into these days. So, what happened to Pluto?
It's not like it's gone anywhere. - (chuckles)
- (voice-over) It's still out there on the edge of the solar system.
So, what changed? Well, Pluto hasn't,
but our understanding of it has. We know way more about space
than we did 100 years ago. Whatever definition science
eventually settles on, sadly, Pluto probably won't be on it.
- (React) So, Pluto's no longer a planet.
What are your thoughts about how that's changed
since you were growing up? - Yeah, so the real lesson there
was things can change all the time. Fact is fact until it isn't.
- My life is no different the day before they said
Pluto is not a planet than it was the day after,
so I don't care. - But I don't remember vividly
them saying, "Pluto's no longer a planet."
I think it was when we were in school, that's when
they started changing it. - So, for me,
it just feels arbitrary that Pluto is just no longer a planet.
And I think they're trying to compensate it
by calling it a dwarf planet. It's like, so it's still a planet?
- (React) How was civil rights education
incorporated into your curriculum? - I feel like they should've
made it not so much from a white man's point of view
and more so from a Black person's point of view.
- On Martin Luther King Day, they'll tell us, like,
"He was a good person," and we'd watch a short video on him,
and that's probably about it. - Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
W. E. B. Du Bois, a lot of Latino history,
also some Asian American history, which was really nice.
So, I had a lot of that background.
- (React) We're gonna look at the then, and then we're gonna
look at how history has kind of corrected itself
regarding one particular civil rights heroine.
- (voice-over) Rosa Parks. Iconic activist Rosa Parks
had a huge part to play in the history
of the American civil rights movement when she bravely refused
to give up her seat on a segregated bus
in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1st, 1955.
Many of us may have learned about how this fatigued,
ordinary woman refused to give up her seat in the all-white section
of the bus at the end of a long day
and accidentally became the mother of the civil rights movement
as we know it. But that story isn't necessarily true.
- (React) Okay, what do you remember about learning
about Rosa Parks? - Not much! I mean,
let's be real. We didn't even have Black history month.
- Yeah, that's basically what they taught us.
She refused to give up her seat. - But who knows?
Maybe there's something even more to it
that I still don't know. - (voice-over) Darkening eve
of December 1st, she was sat in the front row of the middle section
of the bus designated for African American
or colored riders when the bus became packed
with passengers and a white man was left standing.
At this point, Ms. Parks and three other Black passengers
were instructed by the driver to give up their seats
to other white passengers. So, it wasn't as if
she was being purposefully disobedient in defiance of the rules
like many of us are taught. She was following the rules
by not being in the all-white section,
but she refused and was arrested after the driver's request
meant she could no longer stand for such harsh treatment.
- (React) So, had you ever learned that she was actually sitting
in the segregated part of the bus but then was asked to get up
from the Black part of the bus? - What? I never knew that.
I just kinda took my school's curriculum word for it.
- That's a pretty good detail to include in there,
and I'm glad that they fixed it. And hopefully, with other examples
like this, they continue to do the same thing.
- The male whitewashing of history is just nauseating.
- (React) Do you think that civil rights education
should be incorporated into your middle school curriculum?
- Definitely. I mean, people face racism and discrimination
in middle school, and people face it even younger.
And so, why shouldn't other people have to learn about it
if other people have to face it? It's kinda weird-- like,
"They're too young to learn about it,"
then people should be too young to face it, you know?
- (React) What were your PE classes like in high school?
And how much did you participate? - Oh, I was a big participant.
- (React) Do you feel that you and your classmates
are enthusiastic about participating in PE?
- No. - It actually got my blood flowing
and then me pumped in the morning for school,
so I was already ready to go. - (React) Okay, well, let's look
at what early 1960s JFK wanted all high schools to look like.
And there were about 4,000 high schools
that looked like the high school we're getting ready to look at.
- Okay. - (man 1) They had a classical
sense going all the way back to the Greek era of what it took
to move the body well without injury. - Oh! Nope, we didn't do that.
- Oh, jeez. - No, this is not PE.
This is bodybuilding. (snickers) - Those are high school guys?
Not at my high school! (laughs) - Jesus!
- Dang. That looks like the whole school,
not just one class. Wow! Look at that.
- Oh my gosh! That is so dumb!
- We need to bring this back. We need to bring this back.
- None of that was happening at our high school.
- I'd be so down. If everyone was in the spirit,
like if that was the zeitgeist of, yeah, exercise.
- If they were like, "Okay, now you have to do pull-ups.
All together, we have to do sit-ups." I'm not doing that.
I don't care what they say. I'm like, "I'm gonna saw my arm off."
I would start a movement to take that away.
Give me the F on my PE form. I don't think college is gonna care.
- (React) So, let's take a look at what the average high school class,
PE class, looks like now. - Okay, so that's agility training.
- Yeah... - (man) Oh, quick feet, quick feet.
- (laughs) "Quick feet." I don't wanna make--
I mean, hey, man, they're having fun,
but yeah, it's for sure not on the same level.
- (React) So, where does your experience fall on the spectrum?
- I would say it's probably pretty close to this.
- I get technically this is physical education.
I don't know how much benefit you get from it.
- Getting the kids up and off their feet and active
in any way, shape, or form, I feel like that's fine. So...
- (React) What do you remember about sex education in school?
- I mean, they taught, like, "This is the guy.
This is the woman. This is how it all works."
- They somehow explained sex without showing body parts.
- (React) Let's look at the Irish Catholic sex education video
from the '80s. - (laughs)
- (woman) They have the penis. - (snickers)
- They're just-- they didn't show us a penis.
- This is more explicit than what I've been taught.
- (woman) ...like John Willy. - "John Willy"! (laughs)
- (woman) We call it its real name: penis.
But God has made it really lovely, so much so that people are tempted
to do it before they're married. Well, that's just an ordinary
human temptation. - Her face! (laughs)
- (woman) God doesn't want people to have sexual intercourse
before they're married. - Yeah, that seems right.
- (laughs) - Why? Sister! Come on.
- I mean, I go to private school, so I'm probably gonna get
a video like that. - (React) So, were you
taught abstinence? Were you taught that sex
was for marriage? - I was, but I also grew up
in a religious household. - They didn't teach us about periods.
They didn't teach us about the female production system.
My grandma, thankfully, she taught me a lot.
- There's this test you have to take about religion in fourth grade
and eighth grade, and they ask you questions
like, "Are you going to have sex before marriage?"
It's more laughable. And then, they're like,
"You guys aren't mature enough. I thought you guys would be better.
I thought you guys would be more mature."
I'm like, "I'm 13 years old."
- (React) So, let's look at what kids
in different parts of the country are learning now
when it comes to sex ed. - Okay.
- (man) Sex ed is super controversial and all over the place.
Different states teach sex ed way differently,
and some places don't even teach it at all.
- (teen) The federal government doesn't require any sex ed
to be taught in any really specific way.
Different states have different requirements,
and some states don't even wanna teach it at all.
So, let's say you're living in Arkansas.
According to the state's law, your sex ed is probably more
along the lines of learning stuff like only safe sex is no sex.
You should only have sex if you're married.
And there's not much talk about birth control.
- And if you live in California, your sex ed is gonna look
VERY different, covering all kinds of things
from birth control to consent to gender identity and more.
- We weren't taught that. Gender identity, we weren't taught.
Consent, we weren't taught, crazy enough.
But it's definitely good to deep dive into that subject
and to really understand what consent really means.
- Yeah, it surprised me, 'cause they didn't teach me that.
I should go back to high school and learn that stuff.
- The weird thing is, they haven't talked
about any consent or gender identity or other stuff like that,
but we have talked about abortion since sixth grade.
We didn't have discussions. They just told us about Roe v. Wade.
But stuff like that, they've talked to us
about it a lot. But they definitely have
a more religious outlook on it, 'cause I do go to a private school.
- (React) What did you learn today that you might not have known before?
- I mean, the Rosa Parks thing, I did not know that additional detail,
which was cool that she was actually sitting in a segregated seat already.
- (React) Based on these videos, would you say that education
has evolved for the better, gotten worse, or is it about the same?
- I think that, in some areas, it's faltered,
and in some areas, it has improved.
- I would say it's definitely gotten better.
- It seems the same to me. It doesn't seem like they changed much
about anything. - I mean, from what I know,
I feel like it's pretty much the same, maybe a little bit better.
- Education needs to be more about how to participate
in the world as a good citizen. - If you valued education
as much as we pretend to say we do, then you would give it to everyone.
And you don't. Education-- a good education
is isolated to privileged people. - I feel like birth control
is a top tier thing to talk about, 'cause a lot of females
don't know about it and what it does to your body.
- If you're gonna be teaching a bunch of impressionable
seventh graders and sixth graders, you have to be accurate,
or else, the rest of their life, they're gonna be thinking
the wrong information. - And also, we definitely need
to freaking bring back JFK PE, dude! Heck yeah!
- Thanks for watching this episode of React.
- If you liked this video, make sure you hit the Like button.
- What are your thoughts on education then versus now?
Let us know in the comments. - Thanks for watching!
See you next time. ♪ We don't need no education ♪
(snaps) Parents! ♪ Leave those kids alone! ♪