Dear Editor,
On March 14, 2018, children across the country plan to hold a “Walkout” at 10:00 a.m. to last for 17 minutes in response to the school shooting that happened a month before in Parkland, Florida.
The event is the brainchild of Empower – which is the youth branch of the Women’s March. Yes, the one that took place last year in Washington, D.C. with women wearing pink vagina hats.
Famous speakers urged women, most of whom were young, impressionable, rather naïve girls and women to be “nasty.” All this is counterproductive to empowering young ladies to be productive, civilized members of the workplace and society, by the way. If you don’t believe me, ask a group of professional women if being nasty has been their key to success.
First of all, the definition of a walkout is “a sudden angry departure, especially as a protest or strike.” Is this really what we want in our schools?
Apparently, the mindless school administrators “drank the Kool-Aid.” Maybe none of them are old enough to remember when there really was civil unrest in the schools. As a result, many people in their late 50’s did not get a good high school education. Schools were a place of fear, fights, riots and hostility. The walkout will accomplish nothing except to “stir it up.” Emotions will prevail and there will be more problems. Children will become more anxious and become even more fixated on the possibility of their schools being terrorized. Every parent knows that when bad things happen, the best thing to do is to talk about the trauma, reassure the child and then divert their attention to something positive. Encouraging a child to ruminate on bad things is simply bad parenting.
Giving a child a false security is also bad parenting. The purpose behind the school walkout is to demand congress take legislative action on gun control. Even rounding up ALL the guns in America (minus the ones the bad guys will keep) will not end school shootings.
One of the selling points of the walkout is to teach the children to stand up for their right to free speech. Well, guess what? Children do not have the right to free speech at school. Fortunately, schools have the right to require students to wear clothes that do not have vulgar pictures, flags, or profanity. Most school administrators do not allow students to use profanity or hate speech.
I will be one of the parents keeping my children home during that portion of school on March 14. I will be talking to them about fishing or cute animals or baseball. I will do my best to raise well-adjusted children. I will not USE my children to make a political statement.
Sincerely,
Glenda Stephens
Columbia, S.C.
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WANNA SOUND OFF?
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