Posted on 09/16/2019 5:53:38 PM PDT by karpov
When New York City announced that public school students could skip classes without penalties to join the youth climate strikes planned around the world on Friday, you could almost hear a sigh of relief.
Before the announcement, the protests, to be held three days ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit here, had thrown a new complication into the usual back-to-school chaos: With the protests framed as a cry to protect their futures from climate disaster, should students heed the call?
Parents had wondered how to word emails to principals requesting excused absences. Teachers had been wondering how to react. Some students had been vowing to protest no matter what, but others had worried about possible repercussions.
Most of all, the decision last week by the nation’s largest school district buoyed national protest organizers, who are hoping that the demonstrations will be the largest on climate in the country’s history, with at least 800 planned across the 50 states. They expressed hope that other districts around the country would follow suit.
“Holy smokes, this thing could get HUGE,” Jamie Henn, a founder of the climate action organization 350.org, said on Twitter after the decision was announced by New York City’s Department of Education.
But many critics — ranging from climate-change deniers to people who argue for a less radical approach to fighting climate change — said Mayor Bill de Blasio was using school attendance policy to promote a political aim. The New York Post’s editorial board called the decision “out-and-out government sponsorship of a particular point of view.”
There is also always the risk that a few students could take advantage of the opportunity to skip school for fun.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Pro-life and pro-gun rallies should also be held on Fridays during the school year. Public schools cannot constitutionally allow participation in some political rallies and not others.
bttt!
bttt!
Can we withhold federal tax dollars for that day if so many kids are out? We don’t pay for days they are off in the summer.
I am kind of sick of seeing references on FreeRepublic to the crappy nyt newspaper. All the people who work there are all horrible people and it is really not even worth reading since it is always party line, leftist doublespeak.
JoMa
It’s a Scam you stupid kids
They are concerned some kids would take advantage of the opportunity to skip school for fun?? Really? When it’s so obvious at least to liberals, that they need to be protesting global warming???
ABSOLUTELY!
This is liberals using the young, naive, ignorant, dumb, clueless...
to do their dirty work.
These students, at least most of them, have no idea about climate change, and why they’re being taken advantage of as useful tools.
Prediction: A very large number of kids will skip school and then not go to any climate rally.
There will be an “unexpected” spike in petty crime.
They don't need no steenkin" Constitution.
G-d help us when these brainwashed little zombies can vote.
Most kids are way too smart to believe in the “climate change” cargo cult.
New York City needs to jump up its own behind, then keep jumping until it disappears.
Moral peacocking endorsed by those in power. The kids aren’t allowed out, they’re pressured to go, like the “climate protests” in Sweden Greta Thunberg led while kids who stayed inside were bullied by TEACHERS.
Swedish schoolgirl who refused to take part in one of campaigner Greta Thunberg’s ‘climate strikes’ is ‘bullied by her own teacher’ and labelled a ‘climate denier’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7062517/Swedish-girl-bullied-not-participating-Greta-Thunberg-climate-strike.html
“For the planet” has replaced “for the children” as liberals’ rallying cry. Children grow up. The planet never speaks except through self-appointed representatives.
In her native EU, Greta Thunberg’s “student protests” were not only endorsed by liberals in power - they punished children who did NOT participate.
Swedish schoolgirl who refused to take part in one of campaigner Greta Thunberg’s ‘climate strikes’ is ‘bullied by her own teacher’ and labelled a ‘climate denier’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7062517/Swedish-girl-bullied-not-participating-Greta-Thunberg-climate-strike.html
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