GUEST COLUMN: Let students practice democracy

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By Eric Chapman

“This is how bad things happen.”

That was one response after Howell High students announced a walkout to protest ICE. Another parent warned that this was “pure indoctrination.” The suggestion was not about attendance policy. It was about catastrophe.

The walkout, organized by students who want to voice their views on national political decisions shaping their futures, was scheduled during the school day (it has now been rescheduled for after classes end for the day). The district stated it neither promoted nor opposed the event. Students who left class without authorization would have faced the same attendance consequences they would for any unexcused absence. Administrators said staff would have supervised students who remained on campus, and coordinated with local officials as a precaution.

Those were the facts. The fear has traveled further.

This week I am on vacation in Austin, Texas, watching my Howell neighbors lose their minds online over children with opinions.

At the Texas capitol is a wall lined with portraits. Governors. Lieutenant governors. And among them, smaller oval photographs of children who once served as pages and helpers. Their names etched beneath them. Their faces fixed in that solemn expression children wear when they know something official is happening.

The building is proud of them.

We celebrate young people in politics when their role is ceremonial. When they open doors. When they carry folders. When they stand near power without altering its temperature.

When they organize something of their own, even briefly, even peacefully, the tone changes.

This reaction is not new. Each generation has doubted the political judgment of the one coming up behind it.

Many of the young men who pressed toward independence in the 1770s were barely older than today’s seniors. Alexander Hamilton was in his early 20s, arguing publicly for revolution. James Madison was 25 when he began shaping the Constitution. We refer to them now as Founders, which makes them sound ancient. They were not.

In the 1960s, students in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sat at lunch counters and registered voters. They were told they were naive. They were told adults should handle it. The adults were already handling it. That was the problem.

After the shooting in Parkland, students organized March for Our Lives. Critics questioned their maturity. Others questioned their motives. The pattern was familiar.

Young people are described as too immature to participate and powerful enough to destabilize the country. The contradiction is built into our civic reflex.

Schools are not legislatures. They are not protest grounds by default. Order matters. Instruction matters. The Supreme Court recognized that balance in Tinker v. Des Moines, affirming that students retain constitutional rights while allowing schools to act when disruption becomes material. Howell is not a courtroom, but the principle travels. Rights and structure can coexist.

What we are really debating is not safety protocol. It is tolerance for practice.

We accept rehearsal everywhere else. A basketball team misses shots in front of us all season. A debate club stumbles through arguments before sharpening them. A theater production forgets lines in dress rehearsal so opening night holds. We understand that skill requires visible imperfection.

Civic skill is no different. It develops through awkward attempts, overreach, correction, and consequence. A supervised walkout that lasts an hour is not the collapse of order. It is a generation trying on its voice in public.

The children on the Capitol wall in Austin once stood close to power and participated in its rituals. Their portraits remain as evidence that someone believed their presence in public life mattered.

The students in Howell are not framed in marble. They are contemporary and audible and testing the boundaries of a system they will soon inherit.

Democracy does not weaken when young people test its edges. It weakens when they conclude that participation is welcome only when it is decorative.

Eric Chapman is a corporate marketing analyst in Howell, Michigan, whose writing explores the edges of American life. His poetry draws on surrealism and the New York School, while his essays map roadside America and vanishing history. He’s also an amateur photographer documenting the Midwest’s disappearing landscapes.