Members of the Civic Engagement Club celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 17 with a community conversation about the future of education held at the public library.

They used a specific community conversation format to encourage respectful debate, which presents the benefits and drawbacks of each side of the issue for discussion. 

“A community conversation, generally speaking, is a deliberative forum where you examine conflicting viewpoints, and the ultimate goal [is] finding common ground on the issue,” freshman facilitator Advith Natarajan said. “This structure of community conversations can be applied to a plethora of topics. It’s a very effective way of communicating.”

The forum centered around the direction education should move in the 21st century, with the three options being to prepare students to be successful in the workplace, be active and responsible citizens, or help students discover and develop their talents. 

“Our educational environment is constantly changing, and we need to make sure our curriculum supports that,” Natarajan said. “So there’s a variety of things you [can] do, like preparing your students to be active citizens, or preparing your students for the workplace, etcetera.” 

The conversation was guided by trained facilitators, including high school students, who help keep the conversation on track. 

“It’s a group effort,” Natarajan said. “After you go through this conversation with that small group, then you come back together as a huge group, which was about 30 people, and you present to each other about how your conversation went [and] what you found common ground on”

The Civic Engagement Club held the discussion over Zoom and in-person in the library auditorium. The forum hosted high school aged participants and adults, including members of the USD 383 school board, senator Roger Marshall’s staffer John Mugler, state senator Tom Hawk and local representative Sydney Carlin. 

“I think [having] students there is a really good perspective,” Natarajan said, “because they are [the] students of the school.”