By SARAH CROSBY
@DHGCrosby
Homeschooled children from all over the Pioneer Valley huddled Monday near the entrance of the Mount Toby Friends Meeting house in Leverett, excitedly murmuring about politics.
Wylie Robbins Thorne-Thompson, 12, of Greenfield, was so excited he couldn’t sleep the previous night, according to his mother, Nancy Robbins.
At 1:30 p.m. the highly anticipated visitor walked through the door — U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester.
He was invited to speak by a 23-family cooperative of homeschool parents and students during a class called “This is What Democracy Looks Like.” The class is one of about 40 that are offered each session during the group’s weekly meeting on Mondays.
“I’d love to see all kids of all school settings be politically involved,” said Lilly Lombard of Northampton, who is the teacher of the class. “But, these kids have the time and the interest. Political participation is their particular passion.”
Lombard explained that students use a voluntary opt-in method to sign up for the classes. By promoting free choice in regard to education, the students are able to create their own experience based on their individual interests.
“They talk about politics all the time; they talk about the elections,” said Lombard.
She said Thorne-Thompson even attends his local city council meetings.
“What 12-year-old you know voluntarily goes and sits in a city council chamber?” she asked. “You know, it’s just unheard of.”
When Lombard heard about Thorne-Thompson’s passion for politics and government, she knew she had to make a class around his interests. In doing so, she found other children in the cooperative who shared his interests, too — Alexander Davidson Carroll, 12, of Montague, and Gillis MacDougall, 11, of Greenfield.
But the three boys weren’t the only ones interested in a dialogue with McGovern. Not by a long shot.
About 50 homeschool educators, students and community members filled a room in the meeting house for the conversation. Lombard began by asking the students to share with McGovern some classes they might take during a typical day. Do It Yourself DNA Analysis Lab, Sexual and LGBT Topics, Ballroom Dancing, Ruff Buff and Tough, and Jigsaw Puzzles were among those offered up by students in the audience.
With seemingly endless course offerings throughout four sessions from September to June, co-op members said the options run the wildest gamut.
“I wish I could be back in school,” McGovern responded, noting how fortunate the students were to experience this unique model of education.
He went on to share his own background with the group, beginning with his own interest in politics at a young age.
“When I was in seventh grade,” he said, “it was 1972. There was a presidential election going on between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. I was attracted to George McGovern not only because he had a good last name,” he joked, “but because he was against the war in Vietnam, he was for civil rights and protecting the environment, and for things I felt passionate about.”
With his interest piqued, McGovern said, he volunteered in George McGovern’s presidential campaign while he was 12 and 13 years old by passing out leaflets and putting bumper stickers on cars.
“On election night in 1972,” McGovern said, “I was thrilled when he won Massachusetts, comfortably. I was a little depressed that he lost 49 other states, but that was my first genuine political experience and it had a profound impact on me.”
McGovern continued with a summary of his political career, noting that he went on to work as an intern in George McGovern’s U.S. Senate office from 1977 to 1980.
He also worked for Congressman Joseph Moakley from Boston from 1982 to 1996, before being elected to Congress himself in 1996, where he has served since.
“I’d met him previously and loved him,” said Lombard. “I wanted my kids to be inspired by a good politician.”
‘You gotta do it’
The conversation was then opened up for questions, and there was no shortage. The topics raised ranged from stances on labeling GMOs, clear-cutting forests and standardized testing, to efforts on trying to stop the Kinder Morgan gas pipeline project.
When student Alexander Davidson Carroll asked for ways youth could become more politically active, McGovern’s message was clear — “You just gotta do it.”
“You know what you believe,” McGovern said. “You shouldn’t be waiting around for instructions. If you want to shake things up, just do it and people will pay attention.”
He talked about a group of high school students who challenged him to visit East Timor in 1998, during a time when the country was struggling to gain its independence from Indonesia.
McGovern was so inspired by the students’ request that he traveled halfway around the world to East Timor, while working as a freshman congressman among a group pushing the U.S. to recognize and respect the referendum on independence. East Timor achieved independence in 2002.
If it wasn’t for the influence of young people, McGovern said, he probably would not have gone to experience for himself the devastation taking place in the country.
“Just because you get elected to office doesn’t mean you know everything,” he said. “Every day I am inspired by people who keep on fighting to make things better.”
Lombard and her students did not wait long to heed McGovern’s advice. They took a field trip to Boston on Tuesday, meeting with a professional community organizer about the Fair Share Tax Amendment, eating lunch and going on a tour of the Massachusetts Statehouse with Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, and finishing their day by participating in a rally at the Statehouse around issues of climate change, clean energy and social justice.
When asked what attracted him to political involvement, student Gillis MacDougall, 11, of Greenfield, answered “I love meeting people that most think of as being in power … I think because they’re focusing on the issues I care about. Talking with them helps me understand these issues.”
The class sent McGovern on his way with a brief performance of their modern take on “If You Miss Me at The Back of the Bus,” a song written by Carver Neblett expressing the attitude of the African-American community toward civil rights in the 1960s, singing “If you miss me in the 1 percent, and you can’t find me nowhere, come on over to the 99 percent, I’ll be organizing there.”
They presented McGovern with a poster contrasting food from local co-ops with food from McDonald’s.
McGovern said he was impressed with the intelligence and passion of all the students.
“These are the kinds of gatherings where you learn a lot, and I learned a lot from these young people, today,” he said. “If these kids are the future, I’m not worried.”
For more information about the homeschool cooperative, community outreach co-op member Andrew Pasquale can be reached at andrew@elytra.net.
Sarah Crosby can be reached at scrosby@gazettenet.com.