Students’ Access to Protests

In light of recent protests surrounding the Occupy movement, Berkeley High students are feeling discouraged by test dates and major assignment deadlines that interfere with major protests and other related events going on around the Bay Area. On November 2, for example, only a fraction of students who wanted to participate in the Oakland General Strike & Mass Day of Action actually did, because many felt that missing one day of school in order to exercise their first amendment rights of freedom of speech and assembly would put them too far behind in their course work. Many teachers who were also interested in attending felt the same way about leaving their classes with a substitute. This brought up the issue of how Berkeley High should respond, and whether school should perhaps be cancelled to allow more access to these events. The answer to this is that school should not be cancelled, but it might be beneficial for teachers to adjust their lesson plan to accommodate students who wish to participate in protests.

To begin with, schools are required by law to have a certain number of school days, so cancelling one day would require the school district to have a meeting to decide what day it should be replaced with. This could be upsetting to students and teachers who do not attend the protest, because they would still have to lose a day of their summers or go to school on a holiday. Additionally, protests are not planned soon enough in advance for the school to respond in this manner.

Another thing to consider is that schools should have a neutral stance on social and political issues, and it might make students who disagree with the intentions of a protest feel uncomfortable or pressured to go. If school were cancelled on the day of a protest, it would send the message that the school’s administration supported the political ideology of the protest, which violates the ethics of educational institutions. The bottom line is this: school should not be cancelled purposefully on the day of a major protest. It would not be right for a school’s administration to do so, and it would interfere in the lives of the students and teachers who don’t wish to attend these events.

Although it would be a very impractical solution for school to be cancelled on the day of a major protest, that doesn’t mean that teachers shouldn’t make an effort to rearrange their class activities to make it easier for students to attend the protest. By rescheduling tests and major assignment due dates, teachers can encourage students to participate in the political process and have the opportunity to join protests for things they believe in without sacrificing their academic success. It’s also important to consider that there are many students who are likely to attend these events, whether or not teachers assign lower priority coursework, so if teachers made an effort to accommodate students’ ability to attend protests, doing so would merely prevent them from effectively being punished in class for wanting to be politically active.

Furthermore, in many classes, it would be easy for a teacher to push deadlines back one day on a paper or major assignment. For many subjects, the curriculum moves in a way that makes it possible for teachers to have a test a day earlier or later than initially planned. By assigning lower priority assignments, teachers then have the opportunity to attend the protest themselves because they would not necessarily be needed in order for the students to complete the work. As for the teachers who wished to support students attending the protest, but didn’t have the flexibility to change their entire lesson plan for the day, they could create an alternate assignment for students who would be missing school.

It would be extremely inconvenient and show political bias if school were cancelled on the day of a major protest, but efforts should be made to make it possible for students and teachers to attend if they wish. Teachers should take the initiative to reschedule test dates and major assignment deadlines if they are able to, in order to give students the opportunity to express their opinions and have a unique learning experience.