Student Strikes Have Worked Before, Could Change School Safety Debate, Says Penn GSE Education Historian

*Note for TV and radio: The University of Pennsylvania has an on-campus ISDN line and ready access to a satellite uplink facility with live-shot capability.

“The student walkouts happening in Florida and around the country echo student strikes through the 20th century, protesting for civil rights and better learning conditions. History shows these protests can work. If our nation’s kids refused to come back to the classroom until Congress acted, Congress would act. Whatever it did wouldn’t be perfect, and it wouldn’t satisfy every side in our gun debate. But it would surely be better than what our kids have now, which isn’t protecting them at all.” 

 - EDUCATION HISTORIAN JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN  

Credentials: 

• Zimmerman is one of the foremost education historians working today. 
• His two most recent books are The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools and Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know. 
• His research tracks how political and social movements come to shape education, in such areas as sex education, alcohol, and free speech. 
• Zimmerman has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic.