These students are setting an emotional and moral growth example for us all.

One Texas school district is telling its students in no uncertain terms that gun protests will not be tolerated. The Needville, Texas, schools superintendent is threatening students with suspension if they walk out or otherwise disrupt the school day in their efforts to prevent future school days from being disrupted by a mass shooting:

"Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative. We will discipline no matter if it is one, fifty, or five hundred students involved," Rhodes wrote. "All will be suspended for 3 days and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline." [...] "A school is a place to learn and grow educationally, emotionally and morally," Rhodes wrote. "A disruption of the school will not be tolerated."

As if students who move from a planned 17 minutes of silence into a spontaneous 10-mile march aren’t learning and growing emotionally and morally. This is adult fear of student moral clarity. And quite likely Texas fear of a movement against unlimited assault weapons. Coming from an educator, the refusal to see that speaking out can be educational is rigid and shortsighted. Coming from someone who is supposed to keep students safe as well as educate them, these threats are shameful.