Smells Like Teen Protests
High School Students are Fed Up
If he were alive today, Kurt Cobain would be shocked.
His song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” emitted a spicy dose of cynicism throughout its lyrics, portraying teenagers as mindless consumers, self-absorbed, and drifting through life with no direction.
What would shock Kurt now is how high school students from California to Canada are surprisingly passionate, focused protestors committed to making a difference in their schools.
In 2022, the young have focused their righteous indignation, not on Republicans, Big Oil, or the Homeless.
Today, our future leaders are instead protesting mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and other COVID-related restrictions imposed on students by their schools for almost two years now.
Here are a few examples:
A Canadian website called The Suburban reported a peaceful protest on Jan. 28 of 2022 in Quebec, where over 40 students carried signs proclaiming things like, “Mental Health?” and “Our voices matter!”
Some videos went viral from a protest conducted by high school students in Washington State. National Review reports the students were voicing their opposition to mask mandates. Senior Cade Costales (showing himself as a future leader of men in a viral video) and two of his buddies are leading the protest, calling their movement the Freedom Fighters of Washougal on social media.
In Oakdale, California, hundreds of high school students are now refusing to wear masks, reports the Daily Wire, who writes that “The protests are part of a coordinated ‘Let Them Breathe’ effort pushed by Oakdale parents and students. On Wednesday alone, 375 Oakdale Joint Unified students refused to wear masks, while parents protested the mask mandate outside the schools.”
Parents and their teens are protesting this “new normal” together.
No one saw this coming three years ago.
Kurt Cobain certainly didn’t.
But is this pushback from high school students a surprise? It shouldn’t be when you consider how our children have, in many ways, endured more disruption in their lives than anyone. North American teens have been forced to live with some of the strictest, harshest, wackiest draconian measures of the past 24 months.
North American high schoolers appear to be tired of authoritarian policies that make them feel “stupid and contagious,” like Cobain famously sang.
“Here we are now! Listen to us!”