Civil Disobedience, Student Style

Today’s local newspapers were replete with stories and opinions about a group of Hunterdon County students at the Readington Middle School. These are the kids who were pinched by the administration, because they paid for their lunches with pennies.

The Star-Ledger ran a story about it in today’s county section. A same-day Courier News editorial discussed it, and the editorial page featured comments from Joan Greiner’s blog. The one thought that really grabbed my attention, though, was encapsulated in the last sentence from Jay Jefferson Cooke’s article in the Courier News. He wrote, “I don’t know where I’d be eating today if a few people hadn’t protested at a few lunch counters some years back.”

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay entitled, Civil Disobedience. It became the gold standard for carrying out non-violent protest. When Mohandas Gandhi, the renowned leader of non-violent resistance in India once was asked the source of his inspiration, he referred his American questioner to the works of Thoreau. Martin Luther King was Gandhi’s American counterpart. Both paid dearly for their techniques of protest.

Obviously, the stakes for a group of young school kids challenging the time allotted for lunch doesn’t carry the same import as that of people protesting peacefully for civil rights. But the thinking is similar. So is the risk. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to carry through with the kids’ detention. It can underscore to these young minds that sticking your neck out in public for a good cause can achieve gains, but not without cost.

I wonder if Schools Superintendent Jorden Schiff and Principal Catherine Hollinger would consider an assignment for these kids built around the essay, Civil Disobedience. The administration and teachers should read it first. It makes an excellent basis for children to understand that they are not the first to have thought of poking peacefully – if not without irritation, at authority.


Note: For Joan Greiner's blog post, see http://cnflemington.blogspot.com/. For the Courier News editorial see http://www.cn.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080304/OPINION01/803040316/1009. Jay Jefferson Cooke’s article is at http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080304/NEWS01/803040402/1006/NEWS01. The Star-Ledger story is at http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/somerset/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1204608986194610.xml&coll=1