Organizing Student Activists, Voices

High School Students are a group who usually overlooked by the mainstream loudspeaker. The common misconception that youth hasn’t a clue or an opinion of what happens in the world is absurd, and I’m attempting to counter the prevailing argument with place students will have a voice, a real voice. Not only am I planning on forming a advocacy publication (appeal to reason), I’m also planning a radical coordinating committee to give students the voice the deserve.

Those who hold the power over high school students –administrators, teachers, parents– usually conclude that students have no opinion and only their superiors have the enlightened knowledge of what is best. As with the struggles of labor in the past century, where both parties –labor and employer– had a say, students must recognize their equal rights with their superiors. Most forget the view of students when legislating reforms to education and emplacing what they view as beneficial to the very people whom they are responsible to serve –the students.

In Michigan, an acceptable public education and one that couldn’t meet the standards of any respectable industrialized nation can mean the difference of one side of the street. The socioeconomic segregation that plagues Metro Detroit, among other places, creates an educational atmosphere that resembles a marketplace more then nation where education is held in high regard.

Perhaps Michigan Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos favors a marketplace, for his proposed reforms to education that include school vouchers to private schools couldn’t prove otherwise. Dick DeVos claims “that every child in Michigan deserves a world-class education that prepares them for the jobs of tomorrow,” but supports policy that will devastate public education by essentially forfeiting it to private hands. The theory that cutting funding to poorly graded schools will motivate them to improve education is not only a myth, it’s outright obvious –schools are not businesses, and should not be left to the fate of the free market among other institutions. Have we forgotten the term ‘equal opportunity’?

The latter is a prime example in understanding the goal of religions and private interests attempting to take advantage of students who, without a strong united voice, have no voice. Student solidarity is important and often overlooked in a generation where cliques alienate the student population into specialized classes who forget what they have in common. Materialism, among other things, and the engrained philosophy of consumption and conformity have worked to program youth to automatically accept the societal systems of modern-day feudalism and the predetermined fate of either prosperity or poverty.

So today I’m asking on anyone who is tired of our unchangeable fate and the inequality that plague our region, state, and nation. We are people, and deserve to be treated as such; we are not numbers on a spreadsheet or an expense to be done away with and exported. We deserve equal education and health care, equal opportunity to succeed and freedom from those who seek to exploit us. We must join in solidarity; we must tear down the institutions of tyranny and inequality. If you are with me, join us and let your voice ring loud for all to hear.

Youth Action Coordinating Committee
Northville High School
Contact: Aric Miller
(248) 719-3557
arikwithana@gmail.com

Cameras vs. Textbooks

It’s not usually a hard choice in the academic field, especially in affluent communities, unless referring to high schools. My school has decided to make my senior year even more exciting with the addition of hundreds of tiny surveillance cameras positioned in hallways, the parking lot, and all over the school.

Like many, I became weary of the cameras at first sight during registration; little did I know they would be positioned throughout the entire school. I suppose the purpose of them is to go back on tapes after an incident such as a fight or vandalism. The problem with this is that Northville High School has all most no fight and no vandalism; unlike Detroit which may see several each day in each of its many high schools.

My first hour started as it had during the previous year, in the broadcast room. Something seemed different this year though; every monitor to every video editing system was broken. Not to mention every TV in the entire building that required reprogramming in order to be able to display the morning announcements which my class and I work so very hard to produce every morning, not to mention every student the class was required to participate in the reprogramming. Without the proper equipment, the morning news might be much lacking capered to years past.

Continuing on my day in a usual senior fashion, disobeying minute rules about cutting in line and not raising my hand to talk, I went on ignoring the cameras existence. My AP U.S. History class met during the last period of the day (4th Block), the experience was overall good, and the teacher enjoyable. One major problem stuck out in my mind though: there are not enough textbooks for every student!

One witty student goes on to say “we can afford $500,000 for cameras but not a textbook for every student?” To which most in the class pleasantly agreed. And though the book dilemma will be solved, it won’t be solved without much time and much bureaucracy. The teacher goes on to say “it will probably take up to seven weeks.” Leaving students educations behind in the name of “security.”

The school board recently sent a letter home to all parents warning them of “budgetary challenge[s],” that will cut “areas, such as operations and maintenance,” but promise to “work diligently to keep the cuts away from the classroom,” later comparing the school to “any other business.”

If this statement is in fact true, then why have academic and technology areas been cut while “operations,” I’m concluding, of surveillance cameras have ten folded. The reason must be buried in the intuitive nature of the school district to protect itself against what it views as a threat. That threat happens to be the very thing it claims to hold in its best interests: students.