Student Sticks Up for Mom and Sticks It to School Board

I know we’re all probably kind of sick of seeing videos of parents trying to address the sexually explicit content available in their children’s school libraries. Like, yeah, it’s great that they’re stepping up and getting involved, but change the record already, am I right?

Well, this young man did.

I have been unable thus far to unearth further context for this video, but from what we can gather, this mother had spoken earlier at a school board meeting without using up all of her allotted three minutes. From context, we can assume her comments were about sexually explicit books in the library. When she tried to claim the rest of her time, a member of the board told her she only got one opportunity to speak.

Immediately, a young man (presumably her son) steps up, puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, “What do you want to say?”

And then he says it. Dear God, does he say it.

“If this is googled on our Chromebooks. . . it’s immediately flagged. You block us from consuming this content on our Chromebooks, because it’s not something children should be consuming in a school environment, or frankly at all. But then you leave it available to us in our library for students to freely read. That’s a double standard that I don’t think should be in schools. None of this should be in our schools, and we’re not gaining any educational learning, there’s no educational value in any of this in our libraries. Um, I think you guys understand that. This should not be in our libraries, it should not be available to students.”

I think if he’d been holding the mic, he’d have dropped it.

Obviously he makes some good points, but the reason I think we should celebrate this young man is because he acted like a man. He went to bat for (again, presumably) his mother and made sure that she was both heard and supported. He was respectful and nonconfrontational. I mean, the fact that he went to that meeting at all is a win for any teenager, but for him to be able to speak intelligently on the topic and be ready and willing to throw his hat in the ring?

A round of applause for this young man (and his parents). It looks like some kids are going to turn out okay after all.