Lesson in Civics and Realpolitik Stirs Protests

Were school kids being used? Or were they getting a lesson in politics and perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a President of the United States?

Well, all of the above, it seems.

Hundreds of students from Fullerton schools were bused or walked in for the Republican rally for Vice President George Bush held Tuesday at Cal State Fullerton. It starred President Reagan.

As the students trooped into the university’s gymnasium, or waited on the nearby soccer field, they were among the thousands who were handed flags, pompons or Bush/Quayle posters. They helped make a telegenic picture of the event, in which Reagan bashed Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

But a few Democratic activists were disturbed that the students were allowed school time, and bused in at taxpayer expense, for a partisan rally. They were not assuaged by learning that parents were asked to give written permission for their students to attend the rally.

“It’s naive of anybody to believe that this was solely a visit by the President of the United States, acting as commander in chief,” said Democratic activist Ron Kobayashi of Fullerton, who took his complaint to the Fullerton Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees on Tuesday night.

“It was a campaign event, no doubt about it,” he said. “These children were duped.”

Troy High School Principal John Seeland, who allowed his school’s students to attend the rally, said he knew what the rally organizers were up to, but that was part of the lesson: that rallies are carefully planned events staged primarily for the media.

Besides, he said, it was a historic opportunity for the children to see a President for themselves and to hear his entire speech instead of “sound bites” they could see on TV.

“The educational payoff exceeded whatever political payoff would have been derived for the Republican Party,” Seeland said. “Regardless what party it had been . . . we would have had our kids go to participate, in the sense of seeing in fact what happens, as compared with what we talk about in the classroom, or the textbook things you read about.”

Troy U.S. history teacher Jim Fournell said he wanted his students to see “how the process has a tendency to trivialize the important issues of an election like this.”