Community kudos: The kids are all right

It’s springtime. Here we call that “almost summer,” and we don’t really want to start thinking about the heat just yet.

We don’t really want to talk about our NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament brackets, either. A 16 seed over a No. 1 seed? Yes, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but to the overall No. 1? Our brackets are so busted they look like they’ve been run through a wood chipper.

Fortunately, we’ve still managed to find a few things to cheer about over the past week.

For instance, we were absolutely delighted with the Imperial County Regional Spelling Bee on March 14. The competitors were full of personality and talent, none more so than Wilson Junior High seventh-grader Nathan Ostermann, who won the competition for a second consecutive year. We think Nathan has bright future ahead of him.

We feel the same about Brawley Union senior Logan Nemlowill, who will be parlaying her talents on the volleyball court to continue her education at St. Ambrose University, in Davenport, Iowa. Congratulations, Logan.

Congratulations also to the 34 local sports legends who were inducted Saturday into the Imperial Valley Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame. While we’re at it, we want to extend kudos to the selection committee who chose the inductees. We’re impressed with the effort to honor the past, including players from the 1930s and 1940s. History matters.

We want to tip our hat, too, to

Goya Foods, which presented 36,000 pounds of food yesterday in the name of the Calexico Food 4 Less as a gift to the Imperial Valley Food Bank. Because the food won’t spoil in the near future, the food bank will be able to take a longer view in how it distributes it.

Kudos also to Elva Quezada, president of Amigos de Alejandro. Her charity held a 5K run last week in Calexico to raise money to help families who have a child ill with cancer. But that’s not why we’re saluting her. What’s grabbed our attention is that Quezada lost her 3-year-old son Alejandro to cancer back in 2006 and chose to channel her grief into a worthwhile cause.

Speaking of causes, on March 14, students from Southwest, Central Union, Calexico, Brawley Union and Calipatria high schools participated in various demonstrations against gun violence inspired by the murder of 17 students and staff Feb. 14 at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

In Southwest’s case, the demonstration was a temporary student-led walkout and rally on the school’s athletic field. In other cases, such as Calipatria’s, it was a brief gathering followed by a moment of silence. Regardless of how it was expressed, on that particular day, youth from across the Valley turned their attention to a single purpose.

So we’re going to extend them kudos for that.

Let’s set the politics of the gun debate aside for a moment and focus on the other thing that is going on here — the kids are getting involved. They’re testing out the system and becoming engaged in the national dialogue. They didn’t break any laws. They worked largely in cooperation with the school administrators. They conducted themselves respectfully.

In his famous essay “On Liberty,” 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter if we all agree with what high school students think about gun control. It does matter, however, that we listen.

We’ve heard just about every complaint one can imagine about kids today and how they’re too busy with their phones and their video games to have a clue. Well, here’s a clue for us “wiser” folk — the kids are figuring things out.