Sunday, June 24, 2018

Fortunate to have Oscar Gladish as her Pullman High School teacher, principal


Her View: A lesson in intelligent protesting

By Lenna Harding, Moscow Pullman Daily News April 5, 2018

I have enormous respect for the teenagers in Parkland, Fla., as they demonstrate to the country the proper way to lobby and protest.

They are a far cry from the destructive and disorderly protests by young people during the Vietnam War. I suspect many older adults who disparage their efforts are those same earlier protesters. I have long felt the reason the earlier protesters acted as they did was because of a failure of our school system to teach them how to work within the system to achieve their goals. They belong to the same generation as my daughter, who never had a civics course from elementary to graduate school.

It was a required course in Washington high schools when I was attending, and I was even more fortunate to have Oscar Gladish as my teacher. He not only taught civics and an American history course - also required - but as principal, he had set up an elaborate student government program at Pullman High School.

Making policy was a student council composed of elected officers and a representative from each class. Then there was also student control in charge of discipline. If a member spotted an infraction of school rules, the miscreant would be cited and had to appear before the council for trial.

Punishment was so many minutes helping either the janitor or home economics teacher after school. The infractions might have been sitting on desk surfaces, defacing desks (punishment was resurfacing the top under instruction of the shop teacher), being in the halls during class time without a pass (there were hall monitors at key locations in the halls) and running in the halls.

Another "agency" was the fire patrol in charge of checking fire extinguishers, arranging fire drills with the city fire department and monitoring them for the time it took to evacuate the building.

This gave us practical lessons about the function and structure of government at various levels. It also demonstrated that government is the people, both by their vote as well as actual participation by running for office and lobbying. I've often wondered how the war protesters would have acted if they had a better understanding of the workings and system of government.

These Parkland students are doing almost everything right and setting a marvelous example to their peers elsewhere as demonstrated by the many peaceful, meaningful demonstrations throughout the country in support of Parkland and other schools that experienced violence.

Registering new voters strengthened their clout as they vow to elect new legislators who will listen and act to correct what they perceive are the causes of the violence. They directly lobbied leaders and simply protested. The marches were well planned and orderly, and the speeches eloquent. The fact that other teenagers throughout the country are taking their cues from this is heartening.

The big question now is: how long can this momentum continue if they don't get what they want? Will they lose heart or simply run out of steam? It's so nice to see the number of adults in the marches with them, but I'm not sure that is enough. I think it falls on the rest of us grown-ups to take up the sword as well and help maintain the momentum.

Instead of ridiculing or demonizing them as some adults are doing, we should be bombarding those in Congress and state legislatures with organized group lobbying, letters to the editors, phone calls and all the other correct ways to lobby. I believe these teenagers deserve our validation of their efforts.

Our children only want safety in schools, the right to life and the right to not live in fear. The measures they ask are reasonable and well within the Second Amendment provisions. I personally think we could enact even further restrictions and still be well within the Constitution.

Lenna Harding lived her first 20 and past 43 years in Pullman. A longtime League of Women Voters member, she served on the Gladish Community and Cultural Center board. lj1105harding@gmail.com, ljharding.com