Students Risk Punishment for Joining Gun Control Protests

Imagine you’re a high school administrator.  The children in your charge are miffed that their schools have become killing fields, but that anger pales in comparison to the rage they feel that the grownups charged with the duty to keep them safe are so corrupt that they refuse to take the obvious steps to protect them.  They look around and see a broken government, one in which big money has so deeply corrupted their so-called leaders that, without intervention, these kids will be sent back to the same blood-soaked institutions where the carnage is occurring.

On top of that, these kids have been told all their lives that they live in a democracy, and that they gave God-given rights that include the right to life.  They actually believed that this meant something, but now they see that this is a meaningless platitude, and they’ve taken to the streets.

What do you do about that?

Sure you can punish them, a decision that has gained some traction, thus teaching them a good lesson in what they just found out.  A) You don’t give a whit about them and their safety, and B) This ostensible democracy is just words on a piece of 240-year-old paper that is totally devoid of value and meaning.

If it were I making the call, I’d be saying, “Road trip! Pack your stuff; we’ve going to Washington.”  I’d have buses gassed up and painted, materials for signs put on board, drivers hired, and coolers full of sandwiches loaded in the storage bays.

“Bus leaves tomorrow morning at seven. Parents welcome. For the next few days, we won’t be doing much math, but we’ll be doing a hell of a lot of social studies. We won’t be reading about U.S. history; we’ll be writing it.

“We’ll be returning as soon as we’ve all learned, me included, what it really means to be an American, and to be protected by a working constitution.”

School administrators, just like parents and coaches, are constantly looking for “teachable moments.”  They’ll never find a better opportunity than this one.