In January, Fairfax County Public Schools will become one of the first, and largest, districts in the nation to allow excused absences for “civic engagement activities.”
The Washington Post reports that while the Virginia district’s new policy does not define “civic engagement,” it may include activities such as marches, sit-ins, or trips to Richmond to lobby legislators. Students as young as 7th graders may invoke the policy to miss class without consequence.
I’m immensely proud that, beginning January 27, 2020, Fairfax County Public Schools will become one of the first school districts in the nation to allow excused absences for civic engagement activities. pic.twitter.com/KvZP9ilqe9
— Ryan McElveen (@RyanLMcElveen) December 19, 2019
Students might love the idea of a new excuse for cutting class, but Fairfax County sets a potentially harmful precedent when it permits and even encourages its students to participate in protests while they are supposed to be in school learning. Here’s why.
First, what teenager wouldn’t take a school-sanctioned half day to cavort around Washington without adults? The protest activities “are not supervised by staff,” and only need to be preapproved by a parent and, vaguely, somehow “documented.”
Second, it is clear that the ostensibly student-led protests of the moment tend to promote liberal causes. The 2018 March for Our Lives in favor of gun control, the annual, pro-abortion Women’s March, and 2019 Global Climate Strike are obvious examples.
Many liberal students will undoubtedly take advantage of the policy to participate in such protests while many of their conservative peers, or students inclined to academic restraint generally, will likely remain in class. This policy may highlight, and even exacerbate, ideological divisions at younger ages — something we should all seek to avoid.
Worse, it may lead to a peer pressure effect where students not inclined to protest feel like they should simply because they are the only ones staying behind.
And it is questionable whether the act of protesting really encourages authentic civic engagement at all. The Left assumes protesting is a form of civic engagement. However, it is not clear whether protest movements always actually lead to the political participation that counts, such as increased voting.
Rather than encouraging protests, a dubious form of civic engagement, schools should focus on real civic education. Though the former may allow students to “share their voices” with others, who may or may not listen, it is actually learning civics that teaches students their place in the American tradition and how political systems operate.
Instead of encouraging protest, schools should instead send the message that authentic civics education, presented without cynicism toward our traditions, has the power to unite Americans above the divisions that many modern protests exacerbate.
Kate Hardiman is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She taught high school in Chicago for two years while earning her M.Ed. and is now a J.D. candidate at Georgetown University Law Center.
