School kids doing it for themselves

What I read

In "Climate change: Australian students skip school for mass protest" (2018), Frances Mao says that despite the Australian Prime Minister (PM) insisting that his government was already acting on climate change and complaining that he "wanted more learning and less activism in schools," thousands of high school students left classes on Friday, November 30 to join School Strike 4 Climate Action protests across the nation. Inspired by similar student activism in Sweden and recent school student protests against gun violence in the US, the teenage students organized the protests to express their frustration and concern that the Australian government is not acting fast or strongly enough to limit climate change, which they say is too vital to their own futures to wait until they are eligible to vote.

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My response 

I couldn't imagine such things happening when I was in high school, but despite the protestations by the prime minister and other politicians against them, it seems to me that the students must have learned a lot of useful skills to be able to successfully organize protests across Australia. The report does not say anything to the contrary, and the photographs suggest that the protests were peaceful, which I think shows that the students have done extremely well. They should get full marks for using the knowledge and skills that they have learned in school to peacefully express their opinion in a very forceful way. And it's hard to argue that they should not be concerned about climate change having serious effects on the world that they are going to inherit from the adults now making decisions. 

I'm reminded of the suggestion that the voting age be lowered from the current 18 to 16, which might be a good thing. It is not only climate change that will, and arguably already does, affect the lives of young people, including teenagers, today, but a lot of other issues, from education, to drug policy, to taxation, and so on. Your average 16 year old might not be paying taxes yet, but that is not a qualification for voting, nor should it be. Being a citizen of the society should be enough to entitle people to a voice in not only the government of their society, but also its form, and an important way to meet this moral aim is to allow citizens to vote in elections. From the comments that they made to the BBC reporter, Frances Mao, the students also seem well educated and aware of the issues, contrary to the insultingly dismissive comments made by the PM and at least one other politician. 

I think it's healthy to see the young taking a stand for something that they believe in, and standing up to the old who refuse, or simply fail, to understand and act in ways that are not only sensible but also morally better. University students have for long been politically active in such things; I remember the massive protests that helped to end the Vietnam war back in the 1960s, along with protests that drew attention to other mistakes that their elders were making. the article did not discuss them, but I suspect that the adult parents of the students who skipped classes to join the protests must also have agreed to that, so at least some Australian adults must be supporting the students' efforts for the sake of their own and their nation's future. 

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My question

Is the Australian Prime Minister right that high school students should not be involved in political activism? 

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Reference

• Mao, F. (2018, November 30). Climate change: Australian students skip school for mass protest. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46380418