gone viral F
A civics lesson
By Michael L. Sherer
ifteen sixth-graders at St. Paul Lutheran School, Waverly, Iowa, headed off to Washington, D.C., on March 15. It didn’t turn out quite as planned, but the disappointment of a canceled visit to the most famous house in the country taught the students how government works—and sometimes doesn’t. School staff and parents spent two years planning the adventure. Conceived of as a key element in a “cap- stone project” for students soon to graduate, the trip was intended to teach them about government, citizenship, vocation and to help them grow as people of faith. Along with their teacher, Lynn Brown, and school
principal Christi Lines, they visited the U.S. Capitol building, the front steps of the Supreme Court building, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Zoo, Arlington National Cemetery and George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Va.
Conspicuously absent from the itinerary was the
White House. Landing a tour is always chancy because timing is everything (allow too little time to secure gate passes and you can’t get in). The sixth-graders did every- thing right and received necessary credentials at the last minute.
But then the government’s automatic budget cuts
kicked in on March 1, affecting the tours. ABC News ran a story on school groups losing their chances to visit the White House, randomly selecting St. Paul to feature. ABC had seen a story and photo on the school’s Face- book site.
The mom who took the photo, Karen Thalacker, and the students were interviewed via Skype. A YouTube version of the interview went viral. Soon other news media were talking about the sixth-graders’ plight. It didn’t get their White House tour reinstated, but it cer-
tainly created publicity for the town and school. Curt Schneider, a pastor of St. Paul, thought the story would die after the ABC feature, but a journalist at a White House media briefing asked press secretary Jay Carney: “What have you got to say to those schoolkids from St. Paul Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, who can’t tour the White House now?” That, said Schneider, was when Fox and other media
jumped on the story. “Suddenly it was everywhere,” he said.
“We are not choosing sides,” Thalacker told the Asso-
ciated Press. “Our children are not Democrats, are not Republicans. Our children are Americans who want to visit the White House.” The students asked their congressman, Bruce Braley
of Waterloo, Iowa, to deliver a letter they wrote to the White House. In pencil on lined notebook paper, they asked President Barack Obama to do what he could to open the White House. Punctuated with a smiley face they added: “P.S. Our class would like to play basketball with you.”
When students and school officials realized the pub-
licity might prompt the White House to make an excep- tion for them, they were of one mind: “They decided if that was offered, they would refuse,” Thalaker said. “They knew it wouldn’t be fair to any other school whose students were excluded.” A civics lesson, indeed.
Sherer is a retired journalist and freelance writer. He is a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Waverly, Iowa.
Sixth-graders at St. Paul Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, share their disappointment about a canceled visit to the White House in this Facebook photo. Before it went viral, only a few hundred peo- ple had visited their site, but then it was all hands on deck to field media calls, and the number of views climbed beyond 200,000.
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