One one hand, the Keene Sentinel’s editorial stance is that the Keene Middle School outreach is ineffective and pointless, but this feature story in today’s paper by Sarah Palermo reveals that discussions are being sparked, within the school:
If today’s news becomes tomorrow’s history, what’s a teacher to do when it’s all happening right outside the classroom window?
Throughout this school year, members of the Free State Project or a related group called Free Keene have rallied outside Keene Middle School and Keene High School, waving banners protesting the government, and distributing literature as students leave in the afternoon.
They’re careful to stay beyond the boundary of school property. And teachers try to keep politics there, too, they say.
Keene High English teacher Jonathan Perry said he hasn’t discussed the groups and their agendas in his American Studies class, but the students bring up each event as it happens.
The protests are a great way for students to see concrete examples of the abstract rights they talk about in class, Perry said.
“To watch some of that play out is definitely interesting on a more local level, as opposed to saying ‘Here’s a national case, here’s something that happened in Washington, D.C.,’ ” Perry said. “They’re seeing it on the afternoon bus ride home.”
Keene Middle School students don’t have far to ride before they see Free State demonstrations.
The middle school houses students in grades 6-8, about one block away from Keene’s Central Square. That’s where many Free State and Free Keene events unfold. They often want to talk about the more salacious things they’ve seen.
The activities — public consumption of marijuana, dramatic arrests and displays of partial nudity — have not been a significant topic of discussion in Sean O’Mara’s 8th-grade social studies classes, but students want to talk about what they’ve seen.
“Middle school kids have all kinds of questions about current events, but (as a teacher) you have to stay on target and not veer off,” O’Mara said.
He reminds the students their class covers America from the 1790s through the 1900s — not the Free Staters, he said.
Most of the students’ questions are best answered by their parents, and their opinions are best made up at home, he said.
William Hope teaches American Studies and U.S. History from 1900 to the present at Keene High School. He answers some student questions about the protesters, and asks the students some questions back.
Like O’Mara, he said he doesn’t bring up the protesters in class, partly because he doesn’t have to; the students bring the events up first.
“It’s been fairly minimal: them being on the sidewalk, and someone saying, ‘Is it all right for them to have guns?’
“We talk about, yeah, they have the right to do that, about public domain, the First Amendment, and the (Bill of Rights) are your basic civil liberties. It opens it up for good conversation about your rights as a citizen,” Hope said (see box).
Some high school students have joined events at Central Square, but Hope said he doesn’t know any personally.
With older students, Perry and Hope say they can foster conversations using questions, not lecture, prompting students to explain their opinions.
Perry guides the conversation over the limits of free speech — particularly obscenity and treason — and has the students discuss why different people have different definitions of obscenity, and how that affects the First Amendment, he said.
Recently, the local groups have hit closer to home for the middle school, which serves students from Harrisville, Keene, Marlow, Nelson, Stoddard and Surry.
On several afternoons in the past weeks, members have stood outside the school at dismissal, waving banners advertising the “School Sucks Project.”
Students have asked O’Mara why, and he says he tries to lay out facts, and then directs students to their parents for more.
“I don’t want to dismiss their questions, but I don’t want to get into interpreting what the Free Staters are all about, either,” he said.
The Free State Project was launched in 2003 as an attempt to get 20,000 people to move to the Granite State and influence state and local government, with the goal of reducing the size and power of the government.
O’Mara reminds the students of material the course covered in the beginning of the year — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
“We’ve already discussed the First Amendment so we’re not going to teach another class about the freedom of speech, but we do say these people have the same freedom of speech” the critics of President John Adams had when he signed the short-lived Sedition Act that criminalized speech against the government.
“I do think that the kids understand freedom of speech, and I haven’t heard any kids say (the protesters) don’t have a right to say anything they’ve said,” O’Mara said.
Those conversations were mostly at the beginning of the year, and few students have brought the issue back up, he said, despite the recent ratcheting up of both volume, with a megaphone, and number of protesters.
With four school days left in the year, he guessed the students might be more preoccupied with finals, class projects, band concerts and the upcoming 8th-grade dance.
