The following blog is written by Philip Glazman, junior at New Milford High School in New Jersey

I belong to the vast community of high school students who can proudly call themselves libertarian. After attending a Students For Liberty Regional Conference in the fall of 2012, I began to understand the value and importance of advocating my beliefs. I started to understand the effect of ideas and the impact they have on influencing society. I felt that it was every individual’s duty to help further the principles of a free society by spreading knowledge to his or her peers and colleagues.

That same year, I formed a business club with a friend at my high school with the intent of establishing weekly business discussions and formal open debates about issues which currently impacted or will impact students in the future. Several opinions and viewpoints were presented at club meetings and I contributed a libertarian viewpoint into the discussions. Some members were astonished that I would recommend the elimination of minimum wage or limits on the federal government’s interference into the free market. The simple entrance of a new viewpoint helped build their critical thinking skills on economic, political, and social issues. Our club now proudly contains multiple students who identify themselves as libertarian.

In addition, Students For Liberty assisted me by supplying books such as After The Welfare State in order to help educate my peers. Publications and pamphlets are valuable assets in showing high school students the principles of liberty. This is one club in one high school which managed to promote the ideas of liberty and freedom, but the possibilities are endless if more clubs in more high schools were opened up to these ideas. From my experience in the high school classroom, the greatest threat to liberty is the lack of knowledge available to students. Students thought it was absurd to eliminate the minimum wage because they were never even presented the issue beforehand. Without publications promoting liberty in school libraries and classrooms, students are stuck with a one-sided representation on issues.

The growing number of high school libertarians continued to rise during the presidential election of 2012. Many of my fellow classmates and club-members began to engage politics by watching the news and building their political views. The result was quite extraordinary. When asking a student which candidate they supported, the assumed answer would be President Obama, yet a significant portion of the students in my classes and club favored Gary Johnson. But the problem was Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party were barely mentioned to average high-school students.

Educators in high school tend to present elections into two political camps, yet students from my classes disregarded this and many personally discovered the existence of a third “camp”. This shows that students were able to escape the two party bubble established by educators and the media and discover a new alternative to the broken status quo. Most students favored more libertarian views when asked questions concerning individual issues. Students of vast amounts were acknowledging themselves as libertarians, even if they came to such conclusion after taking a silly five minute political quiz on the Internet.  It should be said that most individuals have a common love for liberty, yet such results are not evident in elections. The true culprit of such distorted reflections in national and state elections is the difficulty of disseminating libertarian ideas to a large audience.

Therefore, it must be a priority to engage students at a young age to think freely and generate the idea of what a true free society means. As Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power” and the proliferation of libertarian ideals into a high school setting is critical. Students are raised in an environment in which only two sides in a problem are presented and the third side of the argument is nonexistent. It would be unfair to generalize that all educators disregard the libertarian perspective, but it has become a significant issue in spreading libertarianism when high-school teachers act like it’s not a popular, intellectual, or living philosophy. I have found that when high school students are given the opportunity to express themselves freely in a discussion environment, new ideas are exchanged and students are forced to critically think. High school students value liberty; they are often just never presented with the option.

It is quite extraordinary how much information is available online due to the generosity of organizations and their continued presence in the furtherance of liberty. After discovering the libertarian perspective, I immediately delved myself into literature which, thanks to organizations such as Students For Liberty, is free of charge. Such books will not be present in libraries nor will they ever be in a high school curriculum, therefore the availability of such books is an incredible advancement for liberty. I receive my economic education not from inside the classroom, but from the wealth of information online and from friends sharing pro-liberty articles on Facebook. Archives of limitless information are easily available and within reach which is in itself an achievement.

Politicians tend to disregard libertarianism as a movement which is comprised of college students or generally young people, yet such a statement deeply underestimates this growing movement which consists of a population’s longing for liberty. Libertarianism is not a temporary expression of disapproval with current policies, but rather a growing collection of individuals who wish for liberty and freedom. Growing support for libertarian ideals is very much present in high schools and will only continue to grow in favor of liberty. A simple tour of a high school campus will reveal a host of individuals who desire liberty. As a high school student in New Jersey, it is impossible to disregard the growing amount of individuals who are able to detach themselves from indoctrination and the fallacy of a politician’s follies and express their ideas freely. A rising generation is present which demands a free society based upon the pillars of economic freedom and liberty.

High schools are not a breeding ground for statist supporters, but rather a growing group of liberty lovers. Yet, such a temporary condition must not be disregarded, but instead used for the benefit of further promoting a free society in the minds of young individuals. The golden key to a stronger libertarian base starts at the high school level and the spread of knowledge to high school students. Liberty is universal and can be taught to all ages. Just like a toddler learns how to walk, a high school student must learn that the liberty exists and is within reach.