but their impact wasn't zero, either.
So, looking back at recent history, what wouldn't have happened if the high schools students didn't participate?
Hmm. It's hard to say. I think the SNCC sit-ins were a vitally important part of the civil rights moment, though, they played a big role in drawing attention to and eventually ending segregation in a lot of places, and high school students did or helped in a significant percentage of them. High school students played a significant role in the SNCC organization in general.
I mean, it's hard to say what the overall effect is; that's like saying "would the civil rights movement has been as effective if there had been a third less protests". It seems likely that it would not have been, but it's hard to say with any certainty or to quantify it.
Suppose a high school student is deeply interested in a particular social or political issue and interested in doing something about the subject. What advice would you give him/her?
You may assume that the high school student is roughly similar in profile to the typical active LessWrong participant when he/she was in high school.
Some candidate social and political issues are listed below.
Topics of particular interest to the LessWrong audience:
Others that are more commonly perceived as important issues in the world today:
I asked a few people to opine on the last two issues on the list (in Facebook posts linked above) and the respondents generally focused on the acquisition of background knowledge rather than direct activism (i.e., read and learn rather than proselytize). Prima facie, this seems like sound advice. But it's quite possible that the set of people I interact with on Facebook is biased in favor of armchair stuff to the exclusion of activism. What do people here think?
Feel free to pick on one particular item in one of the above lists, or something not on either of the lists, and provide a specific answer for that. Or, provide general guidelines. Also feel free to specify additional assumptions (such as the country the student is in, or the student's other abilities or interests) and answer within the constraints of those assumptions.
PS: For some of the issues, you may feel that the issue is overrated or misguided (for instance, you may think that global warming is a non-issue, or that the status quo is optimal with respect to civil liberties or migration policy). In this case, your advice to the hypothetical high school student might largely be directed at making him/her come around to your point of view of the irrelevance of the issue. Comments suggesting you'd give advice of that sort are also welcome. If you'd simply suggest to the high school student to refrain from thinking about socially or politically charged topics entirely, that would also be interesting to know (cf. politics is the mindkiller).