It’s a busy day at Saranac Lake High School. Today sophomores take a field trip to the Enterprise Job Fair at North Country Community College. Also it’s the annual Wellness Fair, which is always a fairly big production for students. And it’s Pi Day (March 14, 3/14, 3.14 … get it?), which will likely have math teachers excited and maybe doing special activities.

And then there’s the walkout.

At Saranac Lake and Lake Placid high schools, at least, some students are participating in a national action prompted by survivors of a mass murder a month ago today at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Starting at 10 a.m., they will leave class and assemble on campus for 17 minutes, one for each person murdered.

To the high schoolers, is the walkout bigger then the rest of the day’s activities? Bigger than jobs, wellness or math? Should it be? We’re not sure.

To politics-obsessed adults, the walkout certainly is a big stinking deal.

It’s activism. To some, these students are brainwashed sheep. To others, they’re stepping up to take their rightful place in society. Of course, one’s view on that says more about oneself than about the students.

While we don’t want to make more of this protest than it is, we think these teenagers know how to think for themselves. They care enough about the world to try to make it better.

It’s not just a memorial service; it’s political, too. At SLHS, student organizers say they’ll be joined by two Democratic congressional candidates and members of Voters for Change, a local progressive political group. The point of the protest is to pressure lawmakers to do more to prevent future gun violence in schools. That means some form of gun control, although the students are not specific about what kind.

Then, after this quick interlude, they will return to their busy day.

The schools won’t punish the students because it’s probably not necessary to maintain order. It’s just 17 minutes, and the point is not to buck authority, as in student demonstrators in the 1960s and ’70s. The local organizers are top students, civic-minded kids involved in tons of clubs. They welcome law and order, including to protect more people from gun violence. We agree that school administrators’ wisest response is to minimize the disruption.

Disruption in the community at large is another story. News of this walkout has triggered waves of angry comments on our Facebook page, with adults of more conservative political inclinations calling for schools to punish any student who leaves class.

We don’t see the need for this backlash. Other students who want to make a different political statement can learn from the experience and organize themselves.

Students who walk out today are testing the waters of civil disobedience. Since Parkland, they see the gun issue as affecting schools everywhere, and they figure that if high schoolers all over the country do this small thing, their combined efforts will have some power to make politicians less subservient to the National Rifle Association.

Maybe. But regardless of whether the walkout prompts any laws, it can be a learning experience.

Maybe this walkout will prompt students to read about Mohandas Gandhi, who led India out from British colonial rule and whose ideas and tactics made the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. successful in leading the American Civil Rights Movement. The most effective protests involve “satyagraha,” a term coined by Gandhi that means firmly holding onto the truth. And the truth for Gandhi, a Hindu, was the same as that upheld in the Christian Bible: People are made to love one another. For Gandhi, holding onto this light in a dim world involved nonviolence, self-discipline and, often, suffering — facing the consequences and bearing what must be borne, even including jail, torture or death.

We at the Enterprise don’t believe a utopia is possible in this life, but we also don’t believe in the anarchic vision preached by the NRA, in which a heavily armed vigilante public counterbalances or possibly replaces the government. We don’t believe in our current culture’s religion of self-fulfillment, although we constantly are sucked into it. Rather, in our better moments, we hope to follow Gandhi in politely insisting on the reality that people need to be good to one another. It won’t be easy. It will involve courage and suffering, and it won’t be fulfilled in our lifetime. But it rings true.

Let’s stop flaying each other over policy disagreements and focus on treating each other with respect and kindness. Yes, laws can help, but whether they change or not, let’s help make this country a place where fewer people become so alienated they are driven to hatred and mass murder.

Whether or not we agree with the walkout’s methods or their policy proposals, these students aren’t hurting anyone. Let’s work with them instead of against them.