Kids’ protest becoming lesson
ASHLAND, Ore. – Ashland schoolchildren are going to become teachers to students throughout the country. Their area of expertise: protest.
More than 50 children staged a sit-in last April to protest the closure of the Ashland Public Library. Ashland police Sgt. Malcus Williams was dispatched to the scene, but he didn’t take out the handcuffs.
“You’re teaching a lot today,” he told students at the time. “Miracles happen because of people like you who stood up for what you know is right.”
After Williams read them a story, the children left the library and were greeted by an applauding crowd.
The Teachers’ Curriculum Institute has commissioned a New York City author to write about the library protest. It will appear in a nationally distributed social studies textbook for fourth-graders.
“We feel this story will help students across the nation relate to how they can get involved in their communities and make a difference,” said the institute’s marketing manager, Karen Johnson. “Civic action is so important to society, and telling this story will help students better grasp what they are learning in class.”
The Ashland Public Library closed in April 2007 along with other libraries in the Jackson County system because of a loss of federal funding and county voters’ unwillingness to pass a property tax levy.
Aubyn Heglie, now 11, said the children decided they had to do something. “A lot of people think that kids can’t do very much, and sometimes you hear about things and get mad because you can’t vote because you’re a child,” she said. “We decided we were going to protest it.”
Parents say the children planned their protest in the conference room of the library. Older people were present, but they stood back and let the kids organize.
“When they chose to do the sit-in, one of the most exciting things was the lengthy planning process,” said Shelly Elkovich, mother to Aubyn and Rowan Heglie. “It was almost a social studies lesson in how to implement nonviolent civil disobedience in a way that is honorable to that tradition in our country.”
After receiving an extension of a limited amount of federal funding, Jackson County reopened all the libraries in October 2007 with shortened operating hours. Ashland’s library opened at 40 hours a week because voters there approved their own property tax levy to supplement library hours and services.