ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Shannon Salter checked the results of an online poll that she gave each year to her high school civics students. One of the questions asked whether they would support lowering the voting age to 16.
Like most civics teachers, Salter wanted her students to believe that their voices and opinions could shape the nation’s future — that their participation in politics was essential to improving their country, their neighborhoods and their lives. A big part of her job, as she saw it, was persuading her students to vote.Salter, 53, chats daily with students, including J’livette Baez, 16, at Building 21. For some seniors, November’s election will be the first that they can vote in.
Salter hit the pause button and the students in her classroom picked up the debate, unmoved by the earnestness of their fictional counterpart. Their memories of politics began with the bitter 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and included theTo these students, American politics was an ego-driven, aimless mess. Adding younger, less-mature voices to the toxic mix would only produce more chaos and disappointment, they said.
One of the students she thought she could win over was Bryan Sticatto, the senior who had spent much of the pandemic living in an abandoned building.team, in which he debated issues such as the morality of mining precious metals or the use of semiautonomous robots in war. “I’d be shocked if Bryan doesn’t end up becoming a voter,” Salter said in late April.
“How can you put someone back into society and then tell them that they are not allowed to vote to change it — that their voice doesn’t even count?” he asked.the first election he’ll be eligible, the loudest voice in his head belonged to his mother. Neither Biden nor Trump seemed like candidates who understood or cared about his life, he said. Neither was likely to make it“I don’t think my rent is going to get any cheaper. I don’t think jobs are going to get any better,” he said.
Salter reassured them, saying that nothing would happen imminently and that there were laws and processes that would protect them and their families. The anger and shock they and millionsin 2016 when Trump defeated Clinton, and
Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)
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