By many metrics, McCaskey is a wonderful school. We have an outstanding music program, a states-winning track team, the most advanced courses in the world available to high schoolers, vibrant diversity, teachers who work tirelessly to ensure that we have the educational experience we deserve. But we are absolutely abysmal when it comes to kindness.

Our unkindness is manifest not only in frequent physical fights, but in subtler interactions. Rumors and gossip are prevalent and social media is a powerful tool that we’ve weaponized to target our classmates. For example, one Instagram account with over 600 followers, @mccaskey_confessions, is essentially an online platform for anonymous bullying. Students can submit “confessions” about any of their fellow students for the account to post. These “confessions” range from sexual objectification to vicious insults, and due to the anonymous nature of the account, there is no accountability for students who make cruel comments about their peers. 

Why are we so bad at being nice to each other? We know proximity can foster resentment, and social media allows for faster proliferation of gossip. Hustle culture might be a factor too. Pressure to stay busy and to academically and socially achieve inhibits interpersonal connection, leading us to devalue kindness in our interactions. This can have devastating consequences: research demonstrates that adolescents who report a lack of authentic connections are more likely to experience persistent sadness, consider suicide, and attempt suicide.

People are suffering more than their external presentation might suggest. We know that the pandemic exacerbated an already concerning decline in teen mental health. In the decade prior to the pandemic, feelings of despondency and suicidal ideation in young people increased 40%. According to a CDC study, 37% of high school students suffered from poor mental health during the pandemic, and 44% felt “persistently sad or hopeless.” 55% experienced emotional abuse from a parent or guardian. 11% experienced physical abuse. 29% reported that a parent or caregiver lost their job. And 250,000 American children lost a parent to Covid-19. The pandemic may be over, but its detrimental effects persist. Yet we are failing to take care of each other in this time of colossal collective need. 

One interesting result from this CDC study is that students who felt supported and cared for at school during the pandemic were 20% less likely to report feelings of sadness and hopelessness. This means that school culture has an enormous impact on mental health – and that cultivating a gentler, more positive, kinder environment at McCaskey might save lives.

Solving our kindness problem might seem like an insurmountable goal. Kindness is an amorphous, abstract concept, far more difficult to measure (and less prestigious) than test scores and attendance, and it is probably impossible to fundamentally transform the perspectives and behaviors of 2400 students and 200 staff members. But it is possible for us to improve. Research shows that empathy can be learned. If we incorporate interpersonal kindness into our curriculums, if we expand and enhance social-emotional education, we can achieve the vision of an inclusive, supportive McCaskey community that we have never fully realized. 

We are expected to create a facade of toughness and impenetrability while in high school that isn’t at all authentic. Everyone’s feelings hurt when they are treated unkindly, regardless of their exterior presentation. The greatest deficiencies in my McCaskey experience related to failures of kindness. I was treated unkindly by others, and I regret my complicity in our culture of casual cruelty. 
In his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, columnist David Brooks writes about how our meritocratic, self-interested culture prevents true emotional connection and causes us to treat each other poorly. He advocates relinquishing ego and generously serving a greater purpose in order to rectify this problem. I think cultivating this attitude and working together to pursue goals beyond self-centered personal enrichment could help us to make McCaskey a kinder community.