{"id":101179,"date":"2018-02-26T18:03:09","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/listen-to-them-brave-young-people-with-bold-ideas-were-treated-reprehensively\/"},"modified":"2018-02-26T18:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T01:03:09","slug":"listen-to-them-brave-young-people-with-bold-ideas-were-treated-reprehensively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/listen-to-them-brave-young-people-with-bold-ideas-were-treated-reprehensively\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen to them: Brave young people with bold ideas were treated reprehensively"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aztec
Aztec High School students arrive at McGee Park in Farmington to be reunited with family. Three people were killed in a school shooting, including the shooter. Photo by Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That cannot be accomplished by shouting them down, patronizing them by insisting they really don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about, casting doubts on their motivation, dismissing them as pawns or flat-out lying about them.<\/p>\n

It cannot be accomplished by disparaging them because they are not parroting the ideas of adults.<\/p>\n

We should be teaching students to listen carefully and to evaluate critically. We should not be speaking down to them with such tired platitudes as \u201cguns don\u2019t kill people.\u201d They know the issue is more complex than that, and we should be glad they do.<\/p>\n

We should be teaching them to offer their best ideas and work with others to refine those ideas. We should be teaching them to disagree respectfully. We should be teaching them to reach past divisions rather than devaluing the voices of those whose issues are different.<\/p>\n

We should be teaching them by example, and the way some students have been treated over the past 10 days is instead a shameful display of denigrating their fears, their voices and their proposed solutions. That is no surprise; the example of adults interacting with one another has been no better lately.<\/p>\n

Many high school seniors are old enough to vote and enlist in the military. They are old enough to have a voice, with a coherent, persuasive message. They are constituents. They are stakeholders. We all should hope we\u2019ve prepared them for those roles.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re well aware of what\u2019s going on around them, and they have gathered enough information to accurately assess whether society\u2019s direction is positive. Some of them, including students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Aztec High School and too many other schools to list, have gained that knowledge in a terrible way.<\/p>\n

They have a right to advocate for themselves and their peers. To suggest otherwise is not only illogical, it\u2019s deplorable.<\/p>\n

High school students are idealistic, a trait more than countered by the cynicism that has infected this country, but they are not naive. They can see what is wrong partly because they haven\u2019t been charged with defending it.<\/p>\n

No matter how many times adults tell them that this country has a mental health problem, a parenting problem, a video game problem, a social media problem, they can see that the United States also has a gun problem.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t offer a perfect solution. They are completely justified, however, in believing that few solutions have ever been attempted. Adults have let these young people down.<\/p>\n

Southwest Colorado\u2019s teens are impressive. They are scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists and writers and musicians. They are movers and shakers, dreamers and doers.<\/p>\n

No matter how often the clich\u00e9 has been repeated, it is still true: They are the future, and that\u2019s a good thing. They are our hope. Listen to them. Listen carefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High School students arrive at McGee Park in Farmington to be reunited with family. Three people were killed in a school shooting, including the shooter. Photo by Jerry McBride\/Durango Heralddu1-i-syn That cannot be accomplished by shouting them down, patronizing them by insisting they really don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about, casting doubts on their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5821,5819],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-opinion","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101179"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}