Survey Analysis Autumn 2024
By Aurica Mosse
The IDEAS mission highlights the importance of empathy and learning from others. We want to see how the student body feels about issues important to all of us. For this issue, we surveyed 197 students from grades 7-12 (about 26% of the student body, special thanks to all who responded!) and are fascinated by the results.
We see that JFKS students have many diverse opinions, specifically on learning disabilities such as dyslexia. 58.9% of students self-report a mediocre understanding of dyslexia and its effects on students and only 29.9% of students believe they “have a clear, strong understanding of dyslexia and its effects on students”. 45.5% of the 154 students who report knowing a dyslexic student at JFKS admit they never talk to that student about how dyslexia impacts their life. This is concerning and shows that students don’t understand (and perhaps aren’t interested in understanding) how dyslexia affects a person's life.
The survey also sought student perspectives on cosmetic surgery. The results came back divided, with 68% of students not in favor of cosmetic surgery. Should we empathize with people who have undergone surgery, since they follow beauty standards? If this question spikes your interest you’ll find a debate on page 7. Due to half of the respondents (43.7%) being neutral about this issue raises questions. Is it because we are young that we haven’t grappled with the topic of cosmetic surgery? Possibly. We also see that 52.8% of respondents believe “[P]eople should feel free to undergo cosmetic surgery without facing judgment from others”. Based on the survey, JFKS students tend to be non-judgemental, even though the majority of students (68.1%) wouldn’t consider cosmetic surgery. Maybe we tend to be non-judgemental because almost half of respondents (49.7%) believe that cosmetic surgery has become too normalized.
The split continues in student perceptions of sex education at JFKS. Asking only students who were at JFKS in 6th and 9th grade when sex ed is taught, we received 150 responses (20% of the student body, still statistically significant). 61.1% report they didn’t discuss consent and healthy relationships in sex education class. This outcome probably lies with the different ways teachers teach this topic, all of who have different approaches to navigating the sex ed curriculum. Regardless of teacher, 60% of students claim sex education at JFKS didn’t include discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity. There is certainly room for these topics to be included. Concerningly, when students were asked if they felt comfortable asking questions in sex ed class, 42.0% were neutral towards the statement and 37.3% state they were/are not comfortable. Clearly sex is a stigmatized topic and students don’t feel comfortable talking about sex in school. What can we do to make students more comfortable with such an important topic? It is disturbing to see that 81% of respondents would rate their sex ed experience at JFKS with a grade of “3” or worse, which clearly shows there is room for improvement in the sex ed classroom.
The survey helped us understand people’s perspectives on many topics that impact us. We see that student’s have varied opinions about learning disabilities, how we understand beauty, and also how the school approaches highly complex topics such as sex education. It is important to remain empathic as we try to understand and learn from each other even in order to understand how we can improve our school together.
