Students share views with Chief Executive
By: Amy F. Reiter
Friday, October 03, 2008
Photo by: Robert K. O'Daniell
Urbana High School students from left, Samantha Smith, Erica Crain, Talisha Dorsey, Ronique Dixon and James Butler on Tuesday talk about politics and their letters for The National Writing Project. Students who are not pictured but who also took part in the discussion at the school are Earl Carter, Devon Carter and Laquisha Lindsey.
URBANA – If you could bend the ear of the next president, what would you say?
Samantha Smith, a senior at Urbana High School, would tell him to change the No Child Left Behind rules. "It's ridiculous how they're holding everybody up to the same standards" without providing similar learning tools, she said. "The worse you do, the less you get, basically."
UHS sophomore Earl Carter would tell him to charge health care fees, to "lower prices for people who can't afford health care, or just make it like free."
Sophomore James Butler would like more thought given before the country enters into a war.
And, just maybe, their words will reach the next president. As part of the National Writing Project's Letters to the Next President, a class of UHS students discussed and refined their views on political issues, typed those views out and, on Wednesday, made them available to everyone at www.letters2president.org.
UHS is among the first of 800 or so schools from all 50 states to have their letters online, said Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of national programs and site development at the National Writing Project, of which the University of Illinois is a part.
Though the letters are for a general audience, "we'll also be bringing the letters to the attention of Congress," she said. "And we will be encouraging, through the two campaigns, that our presidential candidates will be reading them as well."
That's good news for UHS junior Talisha Dorsey. "I want everybody who could make a difference to read them," she said.
Kent Williamson, executive director of the Urbana-based National Council of Teachers of English, said his organization sent out information about the project to its 50,000-plus members.
"It's fantastic to challenge students to participate in civic projects like this where they're thinking critically about what advice would they give to the next president," he said.
Recent events have made the project even more relevant, Williamson said, "to do it in this environment with the financial upheaval, which kind of casts a shadow over their prospects for the future."
The project served many purposes, said Urbana teacher Erin Ludwick, including teaching letter-writing and how to make a persuasive, tactful written argument.
To Butler, getting to tell politicians what young people need and want was a refreshing reverse from the norm, when politicians talk about young people without talking to them, he said. "Usually, they don't ask us (our) opinions," he said.
Ludwick said the students became passionately involved in the project. "We talked about economy and oil and health care," she said, adding that she was impressed by the students' knowledge of issues. "Getting the ideas was not a problem," she said. Getting them publish-worthy was difficult – but they did it."
Williamson said the project brings academic exercise into the larger world.
"It's a really rich way to invite students to engage in more formal communication, but they're writing to a real audience," he said. "It says that what you think matters."