The last thing children who skip school for any reason need is the approval of some misguided adult.
But that is precisely MSNBC’s Savannah Sellers did on Friday during an interview with children who are cutting school to protest inaction on climate change.
The kids are participating in a movement called FridaysForFuture that advocates abdicating your responsibilities every Friday and going on “strike” instead. The organizers, who boast having 1.6 million strikers on all seven continents, seem unconcerned about encouraging young people to miss school.
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In her interview with children participating in the strike, Sellers explained:
Friday for Future is this idea of students skipping school on Friday to essentially say, ‘Look, why do I need to go to school if I don’t know the future based on the state of the planet?’ That’s what these students have been doing for a long time. They have been skipping school.
One of the children interviewed, 12-year-old Ella, told Sellers, “I’ve been skipping school for 11 weeks now,” adding:
And it is a sacrifice that we have to make because we are missing important things, but we realize that if we don’t skip this school, we might not have a future. So we need to.
Sellers’s response? “It’s amazing you guys are doing this at your age. Thank you for talking to us.”
It’s a pity that the network couldn’t spare an adult for the assignment, who might have pointed out the importance of staying in school, not to mention the fact that truancy is a crime in some states, where it is considered a form of child neglect. Parents of truant children in Illinois, for example, face up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine.
