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04/02/2006:

"Schools Shut Down Over Immigration Uproar - Corporate Censorship - this News Article Was Blocked by Norton Securities' Parental Control Function."

LOS ANGELES (March 30) - Teachers and students are turning the walkouts that have emptied high schools across Southern California into a real-life civics lesson about national immigration policy and even the nuances of civic duty itself.

In Christian Quintero's social studies classroom, the conversation flowed easily from English to Spanish - but the topics his students discussed didn't have easy answers.

"So do you think yesterday was a good thing or a bad thing?" Quintero asked of Monday's walkout, which involved an estimated 36,000 students in Los Angeles County, including many from Belmont High School where he teaches.

"A good thing!" a boy in the back shouted.

"Why?"

"Because we let them know what's up," the boy said.

Indeed, the protests landed the Los Angeles Unified School District - the nation's second largest, and 73 percent of its students Hispanic - in the debate on congressional proposals to crackdown on immigration.

Wednesday was relatively quiet after two days of protests that began with blocked freeways and pleas from the mayor to go back to class, and escalated Tuesday to school lockdowns and truancy citations. On the popular Web site MySpace.com, where many students have said they went for protest instructions, the word was wait until Friday for the next mass protest.

Meanwhile, in classrooms and hallways some students have turned to reflection - were the protests effective? were they the right thing to do?

Some teachers seized the opportunity to make the connection between the textbook and real life. Some offered lessons on how a bill becomes law. In one school, lunchtime morphed into an organized forum on immigration policy.
axisoflogic.com