Drama Festival Showed Bright Side of Grant High

It’s time someone mentioned something positive about the young people of today. All we ever hear about on the news are gang activities and drive-by shootings. To listen to the news at 6 and 11, you’d think that was all today’s kids are up to.

There was a lot of press recently about racial tensions at Grant High School. It seems some Armenian and Latino kids got into it and there were stabbings and a drive-by shooting.

The following Saturday 1,400 young people gathered at Grant for the annual fall drama festival, young men and women of all backgrounds and ethnicities. It was a love fest. It has been my pleasure to judge many of these competitions over the years, and they were all like this. They cheer for their own schools but they also cheer for each other. When they see good work, work that is obviously better even than their own, they cheer even louder. They are very supportive of each other and there were no racial tensions.

There were also, sadly, no reporters. The winners weren’t announced on the news at 6 and 11, only more drive-by shootings.

I have lived and worked in the Valley for more than 25 years. I’m no naive schoolboy. I’ve worked with an awful lot of truly wonderful students, who have given me easily much more than I’ve given them. It’s too bad they so rarely get the credit they deserve. Maybe if they were noticed in the media the way the gangbangers are, another type of role model would be available for the kids coming up to emulate.

PETER PARKIN

Van Nuys

Parkin is a professor of theater arts at L.A. Valley College .