From: WildcatPrs@aol.com Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 12:26:46 -0400 Glendale News Press Box 991 Glendale,CA,91206 Fax 818-241-1975 COMMENTARY ON THE PROPOSED SCHOOL CLUB POLICY Glendale Unified School Board By Patricia Nell Warren The great national bandwagon to "control youth" is gathering speed. First it was parental permission to get an abortion. Now it's parental permission to join a school club. Where will this spooky trend end? Glendale Unified administrators just broadened the proposed school-club policy to include all clubs, so it would not "discriminate" against any one club. What the proposed policy discriminates against, and ignores, is something called "human nature". There is a sensitive area of a young person's life, and mind, that resists this kind of scrutiny. Every young person -- straight or gay alike -- is threshing out, privately and alone, all the issues about self and identity and thinking and belief. There are areas where kids don't want parental scrutiny. The more that schools and parents and government and churches attempt to legislate, restrict, control, scrutinize and strait-jacket kids, the more they will resist. Is this what Glendale wants? Students who lie, and hide what they're doing? Does the community want a whole flowering of underground high-school life that adults have no input into, or any control over? If so, then the district should pass the proposed rule. Glendale Unified would be wise to look around the country. In Utah, the statewide attempt to squelch one gay-straight alliance club sparked youth marches on the Capitol, as well as the formation of a Utah Human Rights Coalition with both youth and adult membership. In Mascenic, NH, a single attempt to censor books and fire a teacher resulted in a student walkout -- and the school wound up having to restore the censored books anyway. Right here in Los Angeles, a single ill-considered action by a school to censor a student newspaper resulted in an underground paper that became L.A. Youth, with thousands of student readers. In short, this kind of school stricture usually backfires. Parents and school districts and church groups who take a hard line are simply not going to win that way. Respect, with kids, has to come from the heart, and it has to be earned, not forced. I know this because I've learned it working with teenagers. Proposed policies like Glendale's send a chill down my spine, because they hark back to strict school policy of the ‘50s. I grew up in a conservative rural school district with this kind of restrictive district policy. Those rules did little to squelch our young questionings about the unfreedoms and injusticies in American society. Indeed, they failed to deal adequately with youth problems of the ‘50s, like the beginnings of teen pregnancy and substance abuse and what we called "juvenile delinquency" in those days. Today's conservative parents and church activists who complain about "liberal permissiveness" would do well to remember the real roots of the vast social revolts of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Finally, parents who are so out of it that they need a piece of paper telling them their kid is joining a club, have got a problem with family communication that will not be solved by district rulings! If Glendale Unified passes this proposed ruling, these parents will lose. The community will lose. Most of all, the kids will lose, because -- once again, as before in history -- they will be put in the position of either lying -- or rebelling. Copyright (c) 1996 by Patricia Nell Warren _______________ Patricia Nell Warren has written several bestselling novels, and is a syndicated radio commentator and columnist. Formerly a Reader's Digest editor, she lives and works in Los Angeles today. She serves on the Gay and Lesbian Education Commission of the Los Angeles Unified School District.