Local teens have been raising their voices and speaking with their feet recently in opposition to ICE actions theyve seen on the national news.
In the past few weeks, weve seen walkouts of Janesville Craig, Janesville Parker, Beloit Memorial, Lincoln Academy and Beloit Turner students.
When youth start standing up, history has shown that they can flip the narrative, and so we applaud local students for the action but also raise a concern that both they and adults need to hear.
At some of the recent local demonstrations, vulgarities in signs carried by students prompted The 69蹤獲 to blur out language in those signs, in photos published in the newspaper.
That was unfortunate.
A big part of making your case in any situation whether in a court of law, over the dinner table, or standing on a street corner with a sign is being able to pursuade your audience, to effectively bring them over to your way of thinking.
Too bad that the message students were trying to convey may have been dismissed by some adult motorists who drove past that day as not serious enough, and too bad that the students holding the signs also may have been dismissed as not serious enough, because of that language. As a result, their message may not have gotten through to the people in the passing cars.
It was, of course, a serious message that needed to be heard, and could have been more effectively conveyed with a bit more forethought and different word choices.
Of course, kids model adult behavior. And so ultimately, we take adults to task on the content of those signs, because weve seen similar disrespectful language in signs and other messaging at demonstrations this past year across the country.
The kids are following our adult lead.
And its not just foul language on protest signs. Theres also been a dismaying slide in civility in our general adult discourse in recent years, including in what we post on social media, in how we speak at city council meetings and in how we communicate with each other in general.
The kids are watching and no surprise are carrying forward that incivility. A vestige of that showed up in some local high school protest signs last month.
Theres a way to fix this.
Adults: Set the standard for respectful discourse, model it yourself, and expect kids to rise to it. Theyre fully capable of doing so.
Kids: Flip the narrative. You have the power to take our national and local discourse down a more respectful path. You have the power to turn this around.
Youve shown youre up to the task of raising your voices, and speaking with your feet. Great job doing that. Now, rise to the challenge of doing that with full civility no matter what the adults around you are modeling.
And then, your message will be fully heard and might just change the world.