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This Week at South

This Week at South - 6.34: You have a Mind. Use It.

Greetings South Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Members,

Past issues of this newsletter are available at the following link: TWaS Archive. 

TWaS is also sent via Canvas Messenger and linked to my Canvas Module for all students and families to access, and shared on South’s FB page.

Part I: The News

Content Disclaimer: I am not omniscient. Don’t see your event or results in the newsletter below? I rely on parents, coaches, and others to send me information to include in the newsletter. Feel free to share positive news and results anytime via my email. 

This Week in Activities: Softball, Soccer, Track & Theater. Details HERE. 

South’s Production of Alice in Wonderland: Alice in Wonderland will be performed in the Auditeria at South on April 24th & 25th at 7pm and on April 26th at 1pm. Tickets to Alice in Wonderland cost $12 for teens and adults, $8 for kids 12 and under. All the money raised through tickets goes towards supporting the next production.

Summer School Information and Form: South High School will be offering on-site summer school. Please see the following form for information. 

PLEASE NOTE: There will be no credit recovery class at South next year. So, summer school is every student’s best option to stay on track to graduate. Summer school will run 9 days at South and allow students to recover necessary graduation credit.

New Elective Course for Sophomores: Navigating Careers in Care is a year-long exploration into the diverse and impactful world of health sciences, offering students a comprehensive introduction to the many pathways in health care and social services. Through engaging, hands-on activities and interactive lessons, students will delve into topics such as disease prevention, wellness dimensions, patient care, and the roles of professionals in allied health, nursing, medicine, and public health. 

Shout Out to South Art Students: Last Friday, the ASAA Art Competition results were announced, and South had three winners. Savannah Stout tied for 1st Place in Drawing. Shaney Harcharek placed 2nd in Communication Arts & Graphic Design.  Erika (aka Ash) Holland placed 2nd in Printmaking.  

South Baseball Off to Strong Start: South Baseball improved their record to 5-0 on Saturday beating West 5-1. David Feigner had another dominant performance on the mound, striking out 11 Eagles in 4 innings of work. South has games on Wednesday vs EAST  5:15 at Bartlett and Saturday vs Lathrop 11:45 at Bartlett.

FACE Class/Social Studies Credit Waiver: On Tuesday, April 22nd, the School Board will vote on Memorandum #136 that would waive social studies credit for the freshmen FACE class. The full memorandum can be found here and the result will be posted shortly after the meeting. 

College Application Process Help - Tuesday and Thursday: Come to H204 at lunch on Tuesday or Thursday to get help with the college selection and application process. If you have questions, see Ms. Miller or the following flier for more information. 

Senior Information: We are maintaining an Information for Seniors page on our website dedicated to the Senior Timeline. That can be found here: https://www.asdk12.org/domain/6354. 

Prom Information: Prom is April 26th at the Museum. Tickets for Prom go on sale online today. More information is available on the following flier, including in-person ticket sales, and more. 

Come join the South Choir! South Choir just won Gold in San Francisco and would love to have more Wolverines on the team! You can sign up for Mixed Choir or audition for Concert and Swing Choir. Auditions are Tuesday and Wednesday April 15th and 16th. Come by the Choir room C202 or see Mrs. Nelson for more information.  nelson_rebecca@asdk12.org.

Host a Short-Term German Exchange Student for Two Weeks:  South's German program is seeking two additional SAHS families to host female students (ages 16-17) from Saturday, August 30 to Saturday, September 13 This is for the fall visit from our partner school in Hanau, Germany as part of South's German American Partnership Program (GAPP).  One of the girls needs a dog-free home.   Interested?  Contact Elizabeth Dick for more information: Dick_Elizabeth@asdk12.org

PTSO Board Election Information: It is hard to believe we have about a month left of this school year!! Where has the time gone? The PTSO Board would like to first thank you all for becoming a member this year and the generous donations we have received, along with some great business partnerships.  The school store has been a HUGE success! We thank everyone who has come to help volunteer with this endeavor.

Spiritwear is still available for purchase through our online school store partnered by BSN https://sideline.bsnsports.com/schools/alaska/anchorage/south-anchorage-high-school.  We ALSO still have merchandise that can be purchased in person at the school store or during lunch hours.  

Now, on to election business. Each board position has ONE YEAR term limits.  Currently, ALL board seats are up for GRABS. Please submit any names or questions to (Courtney Luff: cluff521@gmail.com) by Thursday May 4th.  We will submit your name for elections at our LAST PTSO meeting for this school year, which is Thursday, May 8th, at 6:00pm at Raven’s Ring Brewery. Board members will be voted on that night.  

See below for the list of all the positions. If you are interested in a CHAIR position please let me know as well. We still have a few open: these are NOT an elected position.

BOARD POSITIONS (ELECTION)

  • President: Landon Forth OPEN  
  • Vice President: VACANT 
  • Secretary: Jyll Green OPEN 
  • Treasurer: Jennifer Wagner OPEN
  • Membership: Nikki Marshall OPEN 

CHAIR POSITIONS (APPOINTMENT)

  • School Store: FILLED
  • Spirit Wear: VACANT
  • Senior Events: FILLED 
  • Social Media: VACANT
  • Website Coordinator: VACANT
  • Fundraiser Coordinator: VACANT
  • All School Breakfast Coordinator: FILLED

Part II: What I’ve Learned

The Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 was Brain Rot. 

The term refers to the deterioration of a person’s mental state and cognitive ability as a result of overconsumption of unchallenging and facile online content. It can also be used in a playful mocking tone, often by those who spend excessive amounts of time on screens and realize their own mental decay. And there is an entire meme culture surrounding brain rot (I dare you to Google Image search: Brain rot memes). 

You can read more about Oxford’s selection process and other meanings at the following website.  

This idea is not new. Aldous Huxley wrote an entire novel, Brave New World, about a civilization infused with soma, which keeps everyone numb and happy. Because comfort and false happiness are forced, no one has a desire to seek truth or beauty. Seeking truth and beauty would require tension, self-awareness, and an understanding of the limitation of one’s own understanding. No member of this civilization has that option because they are so busy with self-titillation. 

A passage in Huxley’s novel describes a member of this civilization who has been overcome with a false sense of contentment. This would be Huxley’s version of brain rot in the middle of the twentieth century. It bears sharing and aligns well with our current understanding of brain rot:

  • Thenceforward, she remained in her little room on the 37th floor, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand--there she remained, and yet wasn’t there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music on the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colors that led to a bright centre of absolute conviction....” (p. 155). 

Huxley foresaw how our ability to reason, focus and seek truth would be undermined not by physical threats, which was Orwell’s vision, but by giving us an excessive amount of content that engages the reward centers of our brains, but does nothing to make us more knowledgeable or wise. He understood we would be our own worst enemy. 

This trend underlies a considerable amount of our current dysfunction. It is also the single biggest challenge our students face to living well-informed, happy lives. And, it’s not too late to back away from the screen, engage in face-to-face conversation, read entire books, go for walks without phones, and return to the normal processes, which underlie human development and resilience. 

When I think about the remedy for this ailment, I am reminded of Marcus Aurelius’s note to himself in Meditations, where he wrote, “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts; therefore, guard accordingly, and take care to entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” 

Despite being the most powerful person in the entire world, he knew he was susceptible to focusing on experiences and content that would distract him from being a more virtuous person, and this short note was a reminder to refocus. 

In the last two years, there have been two important articles focusing on how screen time and unchallenging content have posed challenges to our education system. The first was published in The Atlantic, and was entitled, The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books. Here’s a preview if you’re not a subscriber. 

The second was published earlier this month by David Brooks. In that article he writes:

  • Actually initiating a search for information on the web may not weaken your reasoning skills. But passively scrolling TikTok or X weakens everything from your ability to process verbal information to your working memory to your ability to focus. You might as well take a sledgehammer to your skull. 

Those who grew up in the first Internet age may be familiar with the process outlined in that first sentence. Many of us saw the Internet as an endless archive of all the information in the world, and we assumed that would make us all smarter, more productive and more tolerant. Unfortunately, it seems to have done the opposite. And in the new age, content isn’t waiting for us to actively retrieve it, it often comes directly to us whether we want it or not.

Over the last two months I have seen several young people ask simple questions about when an assignment is due or when practice starts or about the deadline for an application. In every instance this information was made available and was easy to retrieve if someone were to look for it. Perhaps we have made a mistaken assumption that someone who was interested would go looking. Anecdotally, it seems like we are now in the push notification age. As in, if it isn’t sent directly to my phone as a banner notification, then I am unlikely to do it. 

While quick reminders are convenient, they appear to be making us less aware overall. Brooks goes on to write about the considerable reduction in test scores and the notable rise in anxiety starting in 2012. He echoes Jonathan Haidt’s claim that smartphones (our modern day soma) permeated our lives and schools by that time. He agrees with Haidt that our screen-based behavior, where we can all inhabit our own dopamine infused, self-confirming bubble, has lead to a concerning cultural change, and that:

  • We’re abandoning a value that used to be central to our culture--the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgement all the days of your life. That education, including lifelong out-of-school learning, is really valuable. 

It is clear that on average students are reading and writing less, are less independent, and are relying on AI, which leads to stasis or regression, rather than good, old-fashioned hard work that leads to greater critical thinking, reading, writing and speaking ability. If your information ecology is made up of endless 17-second videos on autoplay that do not contain any useful information, it is reasonable to expect that learning that requires more cognitive load will be less desirable. And this also underlies the lack of value in online classes, where there is little to no interaction with other humans. 

Due to a need for our system to be efficient, we now offer more online classes than ever. They create a slightly milder form of brain rot. In these “classes” there is little to no social interaction, cheating is both easy and rampant, and the content is often stale because it is detached from a teacher who could bring the content to life, explain how it applies to the problems in our everyday lives, and use the information as means of social engagement. The net effect of these classes is a grade that does not reflect knowledge or wisdom. 

More screen time is not what our kids need. We should want the opposite. As many developmental researchers have pointed out, our kids need face-to-face interaction, unstructured time in which to be both bored and then creative, and everyday challenges and adventures where they can problem solve and gain confidence in their ability to overcome obstacles and become independent. 

If we want our students to achieve, we have to look back to the processes that have stood the test of time. That includes those mentioned above, and a mostly analog approach to learning, which involves writing with pens and paper, reading whole books, speaking our truths, listening to others, deliberating when we don’t initially agree, reflecting on our mistakes, getting incrementally better, and facing and overcoming frustration.  

As Brian Klaas writes, 

  • If you want to know what you think about a topic, write about it. Writing has a way of ruthlessly exposing unclear thoughts and imprecision. This is part of what is lost by ChatGPT, the mistaken belief that the spat out string of words in a reasonable order is the only goal, when it’s often the cognitive act of producing the string of words that matters most. (italics mine)

It’s not too late to put the phone down and to pick up real life. To engage in the cognitive act of producing. In the end, we still have the choice to answer a resounding yes to the question:

You have a mind? Why not use it?