Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom
Election Day isn’t just for those 18 and older; younger teens can celebrate it too
Election Day is one time you shouldn’t scold your teenagers for cutting class. After all, walking out of school to vote or to support your friends’ constitutional right to do so is evidence they learned something in civics class, their grades notwithstanding. As the philosopher John Dewey wrote in his classic book Democracy and Education in 1903, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
On November 6 at 10 a.m., thousands of students under voting age from coast to coast will walk out of school and march with their voting-eligible peers to the polls to make a statement that their voices and votes matter. Election Day is the most sacred of holidays for a democracy, a time when citizens 18 years and older can select representatives charged with shaping our laws and running our governments. In the U.S., elections give meaning to the lofty opening words of the preamble to our Constitution: “We the people…”
The right to vote is paramount, because without it one’s very right to exist can be subject to the whims of others. Immigrants currently recognize the importance of Election Day in ways that women and blacks, who have historically been denied that right, know too well. And our children should understand it too, based on a similar rationale.
By law, youth under the age of 18 can’t vote in an election and are subject to the rulemaking of others on issues such as gun control, net neutrality, climate change and immigration, which affect them perhaps most of all. It’s like being required to attend a school without having a say in how it’s run, which is the prime reason that students must march. Youth should refuse to sit at their desks while others vote on more than 150 ballot measures across the country, dozens of which directly or indirectly impact education, according to the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress.
The Future Coalition — a national network of youth-led groups — helped organize more than 500 school walkouts on Election Day Continue reading: Go vote. The best civics lesson requires you to leave the classroom
