Posted: Monday, 12 October 2009 11:22AM
Talk Is Never Cheap
Steve Corbett Reporting
Monday, October 12, 2009
One day about 40 years ago I stopped by my high school principal’s office in Perry County. I had been there in the past for punishment, including once for a beating, but this time was different.
This time I wanted to talk. This time I had something important to say. This time I needed somebody to listen.
I had heard somebody in class mention a group called Youth Forum where kids from high schools throughout Central Pennsylvania got together to talk about the issues of the day.
In 1969 we had more than our share of matters of life and death.
Teenagers were dying in a war in Vietnam and the U.S. government could send you there to fight even if you didn’t want to go. Marijuana had just hit our school and we were trying to figure out whether to trust adults when they warned us about smoking dope. Even free speech was under siege and a pastor had used his pulpit to criticize me and the so-called underground newspaper I handed out at the bus stop.
I wanted to participate in the Youth Forum but no teacher had bothered to ask if I was interested.
The principal understood.
Mr. Smith told me I could be part of the small group that went to Harrisburg to talk.
And talk we did.
In addition to feeling good that I could speak my mind, I met a black teenager my age. We talked and compared life experiences. I had played basketball against some kids but never had a conversation with a black kid.
I think his name was Charlie.
And I hooked up with him later to play basketball on an outdoor court in the inner city. I visited his home. I met his mother. All this was new and awkward and exciting. I was learning something all because I wanted to talk to people.
All teenagers have something to say. Most of them want to talk. With encouragement, most of them will share their feelings about the issues of the day and their lives in and out of school. Even the shy ones will learn from listening and one day might develop the confidence to speak up.
But adults all too often refuse to ask teenagers what they think.
I don’t know if Youth Forum exists anymore.
Instead we let the kids go off on their own and hide in Facebook and other social networking systems that have the potential to do as much harm as good. We harm young people by not including them in the discussion. For our own good, as well as theirs, we need to know what they think about us and about themselves.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what young people are thinking.
Each time a local school board member, school board president or school superintendant gets arrested in the ongoing federal public corruption probe I wonder what the kids in the impacted school districts think. The teenagers also are wondering why no adult in their school district has put together a local youth forum to ask them how they feel about the embarrassment to their schools and their communities.
Three teenagers from Pittston Area School District have called “Corbett” recently to talk about the need for discussion.
Last week a federal judge sentenced their former superintendent, Ross Scarantino, to 13 months in a federal prison. Federal agents have also charged a Pittston Area school board member in the probe.
Yet nobody has scheduled an assembly or a school forum for students to express themselves. Why have the students’ feelings been ignored? Could the adults in the district be afraid to face them?
I’ve been told that several teachers and administrators from the district wrote letters to the judge on behalf of Scarantino, asking for leniency because of all the good work he did for all the years he spent as a public school official.
One of the teenage callers to “Corbett” said he has heard students say that if Scarantino stole – and he admitted that he did – he did it for the school.
A long time ago I heard an adult say that “if” disgraced legendary Northeastern Pennsylvania Congressman Dan Flood “stole,” he “stole for us.” The comment stunned me. But to hear a teenager say the same about a powerful school leader is downright scary.
We need to talk with the young. Mostly, though, we need to listen because young people definitely have something to say. And I want to hear their ideas.
Maybe each area school could establish a youth forum.
Maybe they can even have a yearly conference - just like the bad old days.
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Corbett
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