We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: there are somewhere around 3,000 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors, not that you’d know it from watching the five or so that keep popping up on cable TV.

Pro-gun control students have appeared on “Ellen,” while David Hogg alone has appeared on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” and “Reliable Sources,” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” ABC News, HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and more that we’re forgetting right now.

There’s been talk that one of the reasons the (pro-gun control) students are having such an impact is because of the awesome debate program at their high school, and Slate seems to think their public school education is behind their success (success in selling AR-15s and NRA memberships, that is).

So, is writer Dahlia Lithwick arguing for gun control, public schools, or a little of both?

Part of the reason the Stoneman Douglas students have become stars in recent weeks is in no small part due to the fact that they are in a school system that boasts, for example, of a “system-wide debate program that teaches extemporaneous speaking from an early age.” Every middle and high school in the district has a forensics and public-speaking program. Coincidentally, some of the students at Stoneman Douglas had been preparing for debates on the issue of gun control this year, which explains in part why they could speak to the issues from day one.

The student leaders of the #NeverAgain revolt were also, in large part, theater kids who had benefited from the school’s exceptional drama program. Coincidentally, some of these students had been preparing to perform Spring Awakening, a rock musical from 2006. As the New Yorker describes it in an essay about the rise of the drama kids, that musical tackles the question of “what happens when neglectful adults fail to make the world safe or comprehensible for teen-agers, and the onus that neglect puts on kids to beat their own path forward.” Weird.

Let us rephrase that a bit: The reason anti-NRA Stoneman Douglas students have become stars in recent weeks is in no small part due to the fact that the mainstream media shares their interests.

And it’s not just speech and drama club. Brandon Morse of Twitchy sister-site RedState noted just a bit ago that these high school kids have gotten a huge assist in organizing from groups like Everytown, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, the Women’s March, the American Federation of Teachers, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not to mention celebrities like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey.

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Maybe Slate has a point — but if so, why can’t other students aside from the media’s hand-picked stars get any airtime? The same public school educated them as well. Someone had to have taken to anti-gun control side in those debates, right?

Next question: Why are the front-row kids on cable TV news so bad at this? Journalism school indoctrinated them, that’s why.

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Tags: debatedrama clubParklandpublic schoolschool shootingSlate