Pedicone to TUSD students: Act on your own, don’t talk with adults!

by David Safier

I continue to be astounded by TUSD Superintendent John Pedicone's op ed in Sunday's Star.

Pedicone accuses the students who disrupted the TUSD Board meeting last week of talking with adults before they acted. As if that's a bad thing.

Don't we teach our students, you need to talk with adults before you act impulsively? Isn't that the right thing to do? Yet that is exactly what Pedicone accuses the students of doing.

Some would have you believe this action was taken by a group of students who just made a plan to express their dissent. That is not accurate.

It is clear adults both helped to plan and influence the outcome of that night.

But I always try to be fair. Pedicone's accusation isn't simply that the students talked to adults. It's that they talked to the wrong adults. You know, the kind of people who were called "Outside agitators" back when I was in college. No matter what we protested against, we really didn't know what we were doing. We were the dupes of evil outside agitators, unwitting pawns of a larger, evil master plan to disrupt the normal and proper workings of society.

Here are Pedicone's words.

Students have been exploited and are being used as pawns to serve a political agenda that threatens this district and our community.

Pedicone doesn't name names, but I wish he would. Is he accusing MAS teachers of leading the students astray? That's what Tom Horne said. Does Pedicone agree? Or is it the evil forces of the Save Ethnic Studies organization? Is it the Pima County Democratic Party which opposes the resolution to turn MAS history into elective courses? Is it people like me, a 30-plus year veteran high school teacher who devoted his professional life to helping students reach their potentials and now labors, without pay, to keep people updated on what's going on in Arizona education?

Instead of implying he has a list — Naming names! — of these exploiters in his breast pocket, Pedicone should state who exactly is exploiting the students and using them as pawns so we can see the faces of these communist Ethnic Studies agitators.