Where should a Ridgewood public schools student go to receive instruction at that time rather than engage in sixties-radical-type freak-flag-flying no-account vapid politically-motivated brainless-community-organizer-inspired hooliganism (probably with practically the entire tenured faculty, the whole school board, and our sainted district superintendent)?
Every citizen has the right to freedom of expression- even high schoolers. If you disagree with their message form your own protest.
Every parent has the right to expect that when their child is scheduled to be in a high school class, that child’s teacher will teach that class at that time, and that child’s principal will not deliberately schedule another activity on school premesis and blithely invite their child to ditch class.
Only grownups who probably were never part of a prorest at any level worry about high schoolers missing 1/2 hour of school. The students who participate in this symbolic gesture will remember it long after most things are forgotten. I skipped school to go to the beach. Not very noble but I still remember it .
What an uninformed, vile, contemptuous sentiment. I work in RHS and there are smart, informed students on all sides of various debates. RHS students have (rightly) many opportunities to express their opinions, whatever they may be. Parents say they want their children to be well-educated, but lament when their children form opinions and act upon them.
Clearly you don’t have kids in the school system, or you simply choose to ignore the letter stating exactly what options the kids have.
What is this in reference to?
Liberal Progressive Brainwashing of our public school students…
God Bless the victims and their families.
But this is a Liberal Progressive Brainwashing of our public school students and it should be cancelled.
728, schools have rules. Break the rules, face the consequences. Want to protest? Do it on your own time. Walk out while school is in session? Expect whatever prescribed penalty is coming to you. If teachers facilitate a non-school/district event during school hours? Write them up.
We are aware that many RHS students will be participating in the student-led national walkout on the one-month anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. On March 14 at 10:00 A.M., students will assemble on the front lawn of the high school to participate in speeches, songs, and a moment of silence. After 17 minutes, they will return to the building to resume class. The event is organized by Students Demand Action, a newly formed club at RHS. The students will pay tribute to the victims of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and express their desire for safer schools.
Simultaneously, another newly formed student-led group will assemble in the Campus Center to advocate for safer schools and Second Amendment rights.
If a student does not wish to participate in these assemblies, he or she may remain in class with the teacher or, if on a free period, in the building with designated faculty members.
Why not organize this event on the weekend? That way, schooling isn’t disrupted and it would also act as a way in which the “protesters” can show how passionate they really are about the cause. You know, doing it in their own time and on their own dime.
I’m appalled that people do not see this event as a learning opportunity. Voters don’t just fall out of trees when they are 18. They form their opinions and beliefs as they mature. They are influenced by their families, friends, teachers and others. Let them express their opinions in whatever way they see fit.
You are so right, 7:21pm. This “student walk-out” protest trend has a similar whiff to the pro football players kneeling during the national anthem. Coopting a traditional, positive and NON-POLITICAL aspect of our communal life as Americans and using it to further one’s personal progressive liberal America-hating agenda is a weak and dishonorable way to express oneself. Team owners and taxpayers are not impressed and are losing patience with this BS. It will end because it has to end. Ignore the shrieking objections of the New Jersey Teachers’ Union, arm a select minority of gun-qualified teachers who genuinely love their students, and let’s all get on with our lives. These sicko school shooters are all lowbrow cowards and will not attack where the least chance exists they will have a single bullet fired in their own miserable direction.
Pop-quiz Day.
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This test will be worth 10% of your final grade.
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But don’t worry, the questions are not difficult. Just so long as you are present in class.
Walkout in a “gun free zone”! What could possibly go wrong?
Anybody attending a ‘gun control’ gathering will be subjected to lies and leftist propaganda worse than what is normally found in a government school.
The Left wants society to be run by children.
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In a perfect world, 17-year old David Hogg would be dictator for life and would run our society exactly the way Soros wants it run.
The problem is that the schools can’t dictate which walkouts are allowed without looking like total hypocrites.
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So we were practicing Democracy when we left school to protest the lack of THC in our systems?
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The left’s point is to use everyone, including children, to advance their twisted agenda, as the biased media spews fake pro-leftist “news”.
How many kids who refuse to go along with this farce will be penalized by liberal (read:practically all) RHS teachers and administrators, and bullied by their peers? Watch the “anti-bullying” crowd look the other way.
My kid is in HS and doesn’t feel like she wants to go for the walkout. However she asked me what she should do as she is concerned that peers and teachers will look at her differently if she stays in classroom. See what happens? What am I supposed to tell her? I want her to follow her heart but I am also concerned that she may be subject to repercussions. This walkout shouldn’t happen during school hours. Either after hours or weekends. This way kids would be free to act as they wish without concerns of being watched. This administration is ruining the kids with political siding.
Norman, Principal Gorman said on Monday morning, 3/12, that he allowed the walkout because: “It’s a national movement.” When pressed and reminded, “But this is your school!”, he went further, saying “This is a powderkeg.”
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RHS Parent Norman, do you or your daughter see Ridgewood High School as a powderkeg over this issue?
The students who planned this “invited” the other students to come. A second group has invited the ones who do not wish to march to come to their meeting. How much political damage can be done in 17 minutes? It is indeed a politically oriented march, but not oriented to evil ideas (unless you are a NRA active member. Many NRA members like to talk guns and get together to shoot guns and are not politically active.) These young men and women want to get together to oppose assault rifles, not just guns in general. Assault rifles have only one reason and that is to kill another human being. You couldn’t eat a deer killed with an assault rifle, so why have them?