National Student Walkout Tomorrow. . .Can You Afford to Go?

Tomorrow is the National Student Walkout against the war, celebrated on the anniversary (that seems too cheery a word) of bush's re-stealing of the White House.

Unfortunately, many in the educational community are not sympathetic to protesters. In high school, there was a walkout in March 2003 when the war began, and every class missed warranted an hour detention, not to mention you get an automatic zero on any tests you miss if you have an "unexcused absence."

All this bureaucracy and rule-mongering is stifling our rebellious spirit. I guess that's what it's supposed to do, but you'd think with public education taking such a beating from the current administration, they would cut their students a little slack. But then again, I'm just a dreamer.

It seems like there's still this divide between school and the "real world." Not that school is not real, but educators expect their activites to be sequestered from anything outside the classroom. Illness is frowned upon and missing class is an unpardonable sin. When did school become this way? It's been like this for as long as I can remember, but I'm also a young'un.

If you were a student right now, could you afford to miss class, or stay in and suffer the cognitive dissonance my peers and I did while saying "it's not worth the hour's detention"?

The website for the Walkout is at www.yawr.org.