You Can Never Tell

Five comments, as of this writing, on an aside on Catholic schoolkids at the anti-Roe protest. Sometimes I write a lot and get no comments. This post got a comment from Lips! And Stephanie and the tenacious one agreed!

I'm still not sure whether a protest march is an appropriate school outing. As a sometime teacher, I have to say that I'd never "officiate" for my students at a protest. Moreover, in this case, the students were not adults, so these teachers were responsible for the students; if I took my (college) students, they would be responsible for themselves.

But, full disclosure . . . I have attended political events with students. Now, in context, I was the faculty adviser of the Case Democrats. So I was there in at least a semi-official capacity. But the students always organized these events; my role was merely supportive.

So, say, students at a Catholic school organized an anti-Roe group, and they wanted, on their own initiative to participate in the annual anti-Roe march. And they raise the funds to go to D.C.--let's be clear, these students were from all over the U.S., at least the eastern U.S., so this wasn't like an afternoon off, it was an overnight trip. Well, then, the students need a faculty sponsor/chaperone. And the faculty adviser(s) are the obvious candidates. That scenario I don't find particularly troubling, in the abstract.

However, if the issue were not abortion, but instead a student anti-war group, I can't imagine that school sponsorship of student participation wouldn't draw the ire of rightwing commentators--not readers of this blog, but you know who (that War on XMas guy). This was a protest march, after all.

And Sam and Lips raise the issue of student impressionability/the authority issue. I don't think anyone would defend a school imposing mandatory attendance at a protest rally; that kind of forced speech is clearly out of bounds, even if the school has a moral mission, I think. But authority figures--like nuns--may have influence over their charges that blurs the boundary between free choice and less-than-voluntary participation. I'm not saying that any of that was going on here. But I can't rule it out, either.

So, I'm not sure about this as an appropriate school outing.

TMcD raises the participation of the children of Birmingham in the protests in that city in 1963. But I'm not sure that the arrow points in the right direction here. The more I think about this, the more problematic that use of those children becomes. And a consent argument can't get one off the hook, here. Children cannot consent to the same range of acts that adults can. Maybe putting children's bodies in harm's way was an effective political strategy, but I'm not ready to embrace it as a 100% "pure" strategy. In a sense, it's a "call the other side's buff" strategy, and if the other side isn't bluffing . . . then you lose the pot. If the pot includes people, children . . . then that's on you, at least in part.