Many teens stop at a nearby coffee shop before going to school. Students rush in and out of the crowded store without even a glance at the newsstand. Then they drive to the school listening to their iPods instead of checking the morning news stations.

At school, students choose to gossip about the latest breakups rather than discussing world news. While online after school, they engage in “deep” online chats and write on friends’ “walls,” ignoring the news blogs all over the web.

When did society’s teens become so self-absorbed? What happened to caring about the rest of the world?

The school’s Expected School Wide Learning Results (ESLR’s) wants students to be responsible and knowledgeable individuals.

Students’ lack of knowledge of current events poorly reflects the application of the ESLRs. They should take it upon themselves to become knowledgeable about what is going on in the world so they can grow into critical thinkers.

“I like to read about current event because it helps in class,” junior Daniel Moerner said.

Daniel reads news on the Internet or in the newspaper daily.

Current events cover a wide range of subjects and can ben connected to many areas of learning at school. Keeping up with the news can build reading, writing and listening skills.

Additionally, if students were better informed, adults would take teens more seriously. Students who keep up with world news are more knowledgeable and mature; therefore adults have more to talk about with them. Adults also tend to have more respect for mature teenagers.

“That knowledge [gained from current events] is something you can use right now, even as a student, when you’re interacting with adults,” Daniel said. “It will make you seem intelligent, which is important when you’re trying to get your point across and you’re still young.”

Some students don’t keep up with current events for various reasons. There may be a lack of interest in news for those students who don’t know what’s going on in the world. Also, keeping up with current events is time-consuming, and the information is at times hard to digest.

But the school offers a class for those who want to learn about current events, even if they might find the information hard to digest.

Global Connection, a class which grants 10 units of English and 5 units of civics across two semesters, cover current events whenever possible.

They are used as an “aid” to learn the history, but they do not dominate the curriculum.

“If we can integrate a current event that is relevant and related to something that we’re studying in the course, we will take the opportunity to do so,” Global Connections teacher Gabriel Stewart said. “The key is [to use] the current event as an aid to understand the history, not to use the current event as the history.”

By learning about current events, students can better understand their own lives and histories, the past and the future.

“People make decisions upon things that are made in the past, and people justify things by what’s been done in the past,” Stewart said.

Current events can be used to understand history and to understand why the world is the way it is now. It’s important that students learn about current events so that they can make these connections which in many cases are relevant to their own lives.

While surfing the net, eating breakfast or watching television, students should take a few minutes to read or listen about what’s going on around them. If students have enough time to write on Facebook walls, they should have time to learn more about the world.