Looking at current events happening around the country, and particularly with the political pushback against the NRA and the cry for gun control among high school students after the February 14th Parkland shooting, I have examined that these high school and even middle school age kids can teach college students and those who work in higher ed what true activism looks like.
If you have read the news lately, you should be familiar with what I am talking about. Students are walking out of school, taking part in sit-ins at their local congressman’s offices, and even joining striking teachers. To many, these students are being disruptive and disrespectful, but I applaud them for it.
From my experience as a politically-active college student, I have found myself on what appears to be the radical end of political action among fellow college students and academics by proposing and participating in the actions of protesting, civil disobedience, and disruption. It seems that too often the pseudo-activism of academia,which examines social and economic issues through a theoretical lens rather than as an actuality, drowns out and censures those who participate in direct-political action.
Political activists are labeled as radicals by the system that they oppose because their opposition is founded in destroying the corrupt system and replacing it with a better one. Academic activism is more concerned of bending and shaping certain components so oppressed groups can fit into structures of systems that were not built for them in the first place. I have seen many college-educated activists mold themselves into the activism of academia which preaches that civil debate among diverse political theories as not only as a alternative to direct action, but as a correction as well; teaching students that every argument should be constructed with the backing of a theory while negating one’s own experience is used in painting oppressed communities and broken laws as abstract ideas to be discussed rather than real-world issues.
This is where the disconnect between younger students and academia begins; these high school students are labelled as disruptive, and are criticized not for their values, but their inability to uphold their arguments by relating their struggle to some social conflict theory developed by Karl Marx. It is not because these young high school students are inept developing these arguments, they simply know that their message of “we want to live” shouldn’t require any more explanation. Why should students have to justify not wanting to get shot while at school? These students know that civil discourse about gun control among peers in the classroom isn’t going to stop an AR-15 from entering the hands of the next school shooter. They know that politicians don’t respond to letter-writing campaigns. They know that throughout history, the only way to make a difference is to take action and to be disruptive.
I hope that in the time of Trump and the rise of right-wing ideology that older people learn from these young kids and take part in dismantling a system built by groups like the NRA rather than spitting out talking points about gun control as if the lives of millions of children didn’t depend on how fast we resolve this issue.