lead, follow, or get out of the way

It was the calm before the storm. At about 8:30 a.m., I went out into the halls of the high school where I teach. For two weeks, the kids had been talking ‘bout a revolution. They were going to walk out in support of . . . they were going to walk out against . . . um . . . well, they were going to walk out on this date at this time.

So I walked the halls. The administration had determined that the kids should just be allowed to leave without staff making a scene. They would be truant, but not punished in any other way. That was about the right level of reaction—they would incur the natural consequences about being absent from school, but not punished for political action.

So I walked the halls. My liberal bleeding heart had compelled me to work lessons on civil disobedience into the classes I was teaching about the Harlem Renaissance to the juniors. It had been harder to work it into the seniors’ class: they were studying Frankenstein. But, whatever. The juniors hadn’t been able to independently bring up any connections to what they were doing, and it was inappropriate for me to make that connection for them.

So in the end I walked the halls. And watched, and waited. And nothing. A few kids came out of class, looked around, looked confused, wandered aimlessly. The walkout fizzled.

It was exactly what I had, in my cynicism, expected. A couple of weeks before, the assistant principal had told me that this was being planned. I had told him half-jokingly that I didn’t think our kids had the initiative to pull of something like that. “To be honest,” I said, “If they did walk out, I’d be proud of them for doing something for once.” He laughed.

It was exactly half a joke and half serious. It was a difficult balancing act for me. I believe in the potential of civil disobedience in America. Hell, I teach it in Americana Lit. I did, of course, also have to uphold my responsibilities to the school. I couldn’t bring it up, so in class—in a foreshadow of Thursday morning at 8:30—I was left waiting for them to say something about it. To the few who did, I said that only they could decide what they had to do. I told them that there were always consequences for civil disobedience. MLK and Thoreau went to jail. Kids in Tiananmen Square got run over by tanks. They had to decide for themselves what they had to do. And inability to decide for themselves is this generation’s fatal flaw.

I never thought they’d pull it off. But I know what it takes to organize a political action. It isn’t easy. The kids who did walk didn’t have signs, flag, banners, or a place to go. Most importantly, they didn’t have leaders. A lot of kids had come to class obviously planning to walk. They sat in class in their “Mexico!” t-shirts and, when 8:30 came, did nothing. I’m convinced they were waiting for an announcement to come over the PA that it was time to walk out.

I facetiously suggested to the SO last night that I now believe that the kids who did walk out should be punished more severely, perhaps suspended. Because the administration’s policy—to give them a truancy only—was carefully crafted to avoid punishing them for political action. But there was no political action. They just walked out of class, that’s all. That, to my mind, is worse than a mere truancy.

In the end, I was saddened by the whole thing. The day before in my class, a couple of Hispanic seniors had argued. The girl asked the boy why he was walking out. He could really explain, mumbled something about how the government was going to kick out all the Mexicans, and ended up decided it was about “culture”. When it became clear that the girl needed a specific reason, and wasn’t going to walk out for culture, the boy called her a traitor to her people.

Both students were in class Thursday morning.

spacedark