March 28, 2007--Youth Week: Gay-Straight In Utah
Is it any wonder that so many kids hate high school?
A few weeks ago three students were suspended from a suburban New York high school because they uttered that obscenity “vagina” at a cultural event at the school while reading an excerpt from that pornographic play The V____ Monologues.
Last week the NY Times reported that the Utah state legislature enacted a law (which runs 17 pages) to police student groups, particularly high school clubs that might, just might be up to no good. The legislation sets rules about how groups can form, who can join; what principals are required to do if the rules are violated; and, most important, what these student clubs can discuss. (Article linked below.)
Everyone knows that this massive piece of legislation was not designed to rein in the behavior of high school Mormon Culture Clubs (which are permitted) but rather to keep kids from talking about homosexuality.
It seems that Gay-Straight Clubs are springing up all over the Beehive State, but under the new law they will not be allowed to engage in any conversations about “human sexuality.” The statute outlaws discussion about “sexual activity outside of legally recognized marriage or forbidden by state law.” Ironically, the clubs are much more about gay-straight dialogues than a place where gay young people attempt to lure heterosexuals into acts of sodomy.
Then at Wilton High School in Connecticut, kids are in trouble because rather than put on a production of something like West Side Story as they did last year, students in the Advanced Theater class this semester decided to do something different—create a play, Voices In Conflict, about the war in Iraq.
Though Wilton is in the high-rent district, a 2005 graduate enlisted in the army and last September, at just 19, was killed in combat. Among other things this prompted Wilton students to want to write a play that centers around things soldiers from Wilton and elsewhere wrote home about their thoughts and experiences—some supportive of the war, others questioning or critical. Fair and balanced—we report, you decide.
From their classmate who was killed in action, Pvt. Nicholas Madaras, they included the following from one of his letters:
I screwed up in high school, big time, but I can’t help but think that maybe I was meant to join the Army. It has changed me into a person I would never have become otherwise.
Even this was too incendiary for the principal, Timothy Canty, who cancelled the production, saying that “the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students.”
The kids said they wanted to put on the play to show fellow students “what’s going on overseas.” Too many, they claim, care more about Britney Spears’ shaved head or Tyra Banks “community service.”
Their teacher said, “If we had just done Grease, this would not have happened.”
So when we wonder why so many of our young people are turned off by high school and fewer than half graduate from inner-city schools, think about the stultifying effect of these kinds of attempts to rein in the creativity, aspirations, and ideals of adolescents. Aren’t they the very kinds of things we should be encouraging and rewarding?
A few weeks ago three students were suspended from a suburban New York high school because they uttered that obscenity “vagina” at a cultural event at the school while reading an excerpt from that pornographic play The V____ Monologues.
Last week the NY Times reported that the Utah state legislature enacted a law (which runs 17 pages) to police student groups, particularly high school clubs that might, just might be up to no good. The legislation sets rules about how groups can form, who can join; what principals are required to do if the rules are violated; and, most important, what these student clubs can discuss. (Article linked below.)
Everyone knows that this massive piece of legislation was not designed to rein in the behavior of high school Mormon Culture Clubs (which are permitted) but rather to keep kids from talking about homosexuality.
It seems that Gay-Straight Clubs are springing up all over the Beehive State, but under the new law they will not be allowed to engage in any conversations about “human sexuality.” The statute outlaws discussion about “sexual activity outside of legally recognized marriage or forbidden by state law.” Ironically, the clubs are much more about gay-straight dialogues than a place where gay young people attempt to lure heterosexuals into acts of sodomy.
Then at Wilton High School in Connecticut, kids are in trouble because rather than put on a production of something like West Side Story as they did last year, students in the Advanced Theater class this semester decided to do something different—create a play, Voices In Conflict, about the war in Iraq.
Though Wilton is in the high-rent district, a 2005 graduate enlisted in the army and last September, at just 19, was killed in combat. Among other things this prompted Wilton students to want to write a play that centers around things soldiers from Wilton and elsewhere wrote home about their thoughts and experiences—some supportive of the war, others questioning or critical. Fair and balanced—we report, you decide.
From their classmate who was killed in action, Pvt. Nicholas Madaras, they included the following from one of his letters:
I screwed up in high school, big time, but I can’t help but think that maybe I was meant to join the Army. It has changed me into a person I would never have become otherwise.
Even this was too incendiary for the principal, Timothy Canty, who cancelled the production, saying that “the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students.”
The kids said they wanted to put on the play to show fellow students “what’s going on overseas.” Too many, they claim, care more about Britney Spears’ shaved head or Tyra Banks “community service.”
Their teacher said, “If we had just done Grease, this would not have happened.”
So when we wonder why so many of our young people are turned off by high school and fewer than half graduate from inner-city schools, think about the stultifying effect of these kinds of attempts to rein in the creativity, aspirations, and ideals of adolescents. Aren’t they the very kinds of things we should be encouraging and rewarding?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
1:17 PM
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