Reader Extends Helping Hand To High Schoolers
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Dear Water Valley high schoolers,
If you read the recent letters to the editor that have everyone buzzing, you might have noticed that they only addressed the adults in the room. That exclusion is purposeful. Creating a barrier between you, the student, and your education is all about power – by controlling what you learn when you are young, it will be easier to control you later. Christianity has closed ranks, and it has created what feels like an impenetrable barrier between you and the opportunity to learn, well, almost anything besides algebra and how to diagram a sentence. This insular approach intentionally prevents you from experiencing life in all of its full messiness; one in which most things aren’t actually black and white.
Do the parents of Water Valley think so little of their children?
Do they think that a single book can rattle the very foundations of your faith, no matter how they raised you? If you were brought up believing you are to live in the world but not of the world, why are they hiding the world from you?
I was robbed of the opportunity to learn without fear of judgment. In fact, I was trained to actively resist (with no questions asked) any reading or education that the adults in my life deemed inappropriate. I was encouraged to martyr myself in front of classmates over laughably blatant falsehoods that were force-fed to me without any context. With absolutely no sexual education, I was commanded to insert myself into the difficult and very private decisions of my peers. Do you want to know what I wish I had been doing instead? Read books that could have broadened my worldview. Learning empathy and compassion.
When I was in high school, there wasn’t a single adult in my life that was not in some way connected to the church. Had there been, someone might have told me that I was being emotionally abused by my parents in the name of Christianity. I might have known that there was a whole world out there, a deliciously complicated and beautiful place full of art and music and the complete range of human emotions, none of which were off-limits. I might have felt a hand, grasping mine, as I floundered underwater. So I am doing what should have been done for me: extending a hand. Not to indoctrinate or de-convert, but to be a safe space to listen, read, and learn. We’re here. We see you.
Hannah Parish
Water Valley, MS
