Editorial
There are probably few professions where the advocacy for the First Amendment is more prevalent than in the field of journalism, as freedom of the press is protected against congressional abridgment at the highest levels. Conversely, those freedoms extend all the way down to the smallest local level, as the amendment also grants the right of the people to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
When the news of a student petition being passed around first surfaced, the reporter inside me went to work to hear more about the story. However, when I listened to the position of the young people behind the movement, I realized that even in promptly acting to get coverage, I had already failed as a reporter, and I write this editorial’s call to action as an effort to right a wrong that I believe we all share in the culpability of.
Honestly, when I heard that a group of students were starting a petition to request the board revert to a longer school week instead of the four-day week the board recently adopted, I thought it was a joke. It was a rumor — probably an inaccurate rumor at that — or it was some pain-in-thekeister boat-rocking kid just stirring up trouble... like some students do... before becoming newspaper editors.
The rumor turned out to be accurate, and my theory of simple student disruption was proven false. Furthermore, as I listened to the stance of the students involved, hearing their perspectives on not just education but social interaction I became aware of a falsehood created and disseminated by my subconscious.
I do not think I am alone in my concerns about the future of the younger generations. We watch a flurry of fingers and thumbs across the tiny, illuminated screens young people only seem to look up from long enough to watch tv or focus on a laptop, iPad, or video game.
They email instead of call. They text instead of talk. And with the virtual world being as enticing as anything reality has to offer, adults have sat back and wondered if kids today will even understand how to have face-to-face conversations.
Yet, when these same young people are given the option of reducing the time spent in those forced social settings, they push back. And not just a little bit, they quite literally petitioned their government for a redress of grievances.
It seems there may be more to this generation than we give them credit, and as their position is one decisionmakers did not hear or have an opportunity to consider before calling for a vote, I think board members owe it to the students, to their constituents, and to themselves as policymakers to hear that position.
While the administration has agreed to take the matter before the board if students acquire enough signatures, I urge the six-member board majority that voted in favor of the Rotan ISD calendar to make the motion to re-open those discussions and allow students an audience before making a final decision.
With a 6 – 1 vote, not even all board members were in support, and by the administration’s admission, not all teachers are in favor of the unconventional schedule, but the request alone should be enough to convince board members to listen. After all, what does it say about the future of education when students are the ones begging to go to school and the people in charge are asking them to just stay home?