A high school-themed column containing reasons I find for hope and disdain about the future.

 

Hope: That a former Echoes from the Streets’ student who called me the other night, asking for help, but needed to meet me in person because she feared talking about it on the phone, makes the right choice.

 

Disdain: That she even got herself into the situation she is in. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write about it in the future. Trust me when I say it’s a doozy.

 

Hope: Listening to arguments at a moot court from future lawyers at Watertown High School last week, I said to myself, there are some smart kids navigating their way through the underfunded public education system.

 

The moot court gathered lawyers, principals, a judge and state representative Sean Williams to act as the Supreme Court, and students argued the Seattle Community Schools case about voluntary desegregation.

 

Our Supreme Court voted in favor of racial integration and diversity as a compelling interest in high school, whereas the real SCOTUS voted against it. Whatever the case, it was fun to watch students ably approach difficult Constitutional law concepts.

 

Disdain: Yet the school administrators don’t seem to understand the Fourth Amendment. Every student who brings a bookbag to school has to have it searched because of bomb threats written on bathroom walls in recent months.

 

The problem for me with the random searches – aside from discouraging students to bring books home and back to school the next day – is that they caught the kids who wrote the threats.

 

So what are educators doing here? Creating a passive population that doesn’t respect the Fourth Amendment and will be willing to roll over for a totalitarian dictatorship? Sounds extreme, but kids have rights, and we must respect them.

 

Hope: Hamden high school students in the Human Relations Club organized a festival of learning and understanding last Wednesday, May 28. More than 550 high schoolers from across the state converged on Southern Connecticut State University to spend the day at the 17th annual Prejudice Reduction Conference.

 

My friend from high school, Chris Thomas, now a history teacher at Hamden High, is moderator of the HR Club. He invited me to give a photo presentation of life in the Middle East, called “An American in a Post-9/11 World.”

 

I was one of 30 or so presenters. The various workshops – whether it was the Stonewall speakers talking about civil rights or drumming circles or a Muslim Imam sharing truth about his religion - were framed in terms of Post-9/11 world.

 

Disdain: That before my slide shows, which I’ll call Uncle Kenny’s trip to the Iraqi Border, I asked the assembled high school students to tell me what they know of the Middle East. Both the morning and afternoon groups arrived at six basic concepts: War. Oil. Sand. Camels. Women in Black Veils. Religion.

 

That they can’t even conceive of a Middle East where kids wear Spiderman t-shirts and eat candy, where people eat, sleep, go potty, make love and go to work every day makes me despair.

 

Hope: That we smashed some stereotypes and young people acquired new eyes to see with and new tools to work with that day. One day in the life of a 15-year-old proportionally is so much bigger and longer than one day in the life of a 50-year-old.

 

Disdain: That they had never heard of the My Lai massacre. My friend blamed No Child Left Behind’s overarching teach to the test concept. Then again, who wants the kids to know that Americans worship at the Church of Colonel Kurtz.

 

Hope: Imam Nasif Muhammad of Bridgeport gave a great keynote speech calling for religious unity. He is an interesting man who is a prison chaplain.

 

Disdain: I heard that a parent from Granby High School called Hamden high to complain that they were welcoming a terrorist – Imam Muhammad - to speak. Are we so prejudiced that we ascribe violent motives to a spiritual leader from an Abrahamic religion?

 

I ate lunch with the Imam, and I found him a mild mannered man, and a good conversationalist, too boot. Hopefully, I will interview him and write about him in the future.

 

Hope: That Avery Doninger even exists, and that she is pressing her free speech case against administrators of Lewis Mills High School in Burlington to a full trial.

 

Disdain: That she lost an injunction in federal court in New York City last week that would have placed her in office as Class Secretary, so she might give the graduate address in June.

 

I am also rather upset that the people of Burlington and Harwinton aren’t up in arms. Our country rides upon the future of young people, and our society, in my estimation, is actively attempting to destroy their humanity in little ways.

 

Hope: That whichever student at Lewis Mills who gives the graduation speech this month recognizes Avery and her battle for free speech. I was thinking an appropriate protest would be to stand in front of the microphone for 10 minutes and not say anything.

 

Or maybe to say douchebag 1,000 times. Or even better, to let Avery write the speech and deliver it for her. Whatever the case, let’s keep looking out for America’s youth.

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