When I was in high school, the students staged a walk out over an issue that was important to them. I didn’t walk out because I thought the reason was incredibly stupid: my classmates were protesting the “fact” that gay students had more rights than straight straight students.
(All this stemmed from an incident that probably didn’t even happen as I heard it: two girls had been allowed to kiss at prom, but straight couples couldn’t. I suspect what really happened is that two girls danced closer than the average hetero couple and none of the chaperones said anything to them… probably because they also weren’t all over each other.)
Way back then, in what I remember as less than a stellar educational environment, I didn’t understand why people cared about who was gay, who people kissed, or who danced close to whom. I understood even less why it warranted a walkout.
But the point I’d like to make is that in today’s connected world, kids have gotten significantly better at creating spaces that are empowering and forceful (not to mention more useful and less backward). They are learning a fairly important lesson about how to organize and focus an uncaring public (who are so moribund and unemotive they have nothing collective to offer beyond “thoughts & prayers”) on an issue that matters to them: their lives.
They are learning how to stand against people who blame them (the “walkup” response is particularly glaring here), and they have done something I didn’t think possible: they’re going up against a powerful gun lobby and may actually be moving the needle on them.
I wish it didn’t take this for them to learn these skills. I wish there were a way to give them the experience of organization and engagement without the deaths of their classmates. I wish they did not need to fear for their own lives.
These kids are doing something amazing. I wonder if we had understood what they understand, would they need to be walking out of their classes?
