The play is the thing...

... as William Shakespeare would say.

It's not my intention to turn Momrades into a free speech advocacy site for high school students. Forgive me. This involves two of the things I cherish most in this life; kids and the right to speak. (For those of you that read "Digressions", you may recall my recent rant about a group of high schoolers in New York getting censored for performing excerpts from The Vagina Monologues.)

Well, here we go again. Only this time the subject matter is about privates of a different kind - as in the lives of soldiers serving in Iraq.

Apparantly, a group of high school students from Wilton, CT (a neighboring town where I live) have researched, written and produced a very poignant play examining the war in Iraq based on the perspectives of real people who are experiencing it - a local family who lost a loved one in battle, other soldiers who have served, etc.

All involved have noted the enthusiasm and passion sparked in the kids involved. How often do you hear about teenagers getting interested in current events? It's happening in Wilton, CT.

Or at least it was. The school district shut 'em down. Too controversial. Too anti-war. Bottomline: too many uncomfortable phone calls from parents.

Sigh! What a shame!

School administrators hedge the play isn't "balanced" enough. I wonder if they mean that in a Fox News "fair and balanced" sort of way or the real kind of balanced. I wonder what's so balanced about out and out censorship. I wonder if this same commitment to a "balanced message" is applied to the local military recruiter. I wonder...

There are something like 150,000 US troops serving in combat right now. Most of them are very young. That's the way wars work. Countries go to war and use their own children as cannon fodder. Or IED fodder, as the case may be.

Tomorrow's fresh troops are hanging out right now in places like Wilton High. No one has a greater stake or stands to lose more in this war than today's high schoolers. Of all the people who should be allowed to have a voice in this national debate, it's them.

I say let the show go on. Let them speak. And by the way, we should listen.

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