The details about the latest free speech in schools battle going on at the Supreme Court are supremely depressing:
The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case that has attracted attention mainly because of its eccentric story line: An Alaska student was suspended from high school in 2002 after he unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” while the Olympic torch passed by. But the case raises important issues of freedom of expression and student censorship that go far beyond the words on that banner. The court should affirm the appeals court’s well-reasoned decision that when the school punished the student it violated his First Amendment rights.
Joseph Frederick and his fellow students were allowed to leave the grounds of Juneau-Douglas High School so they could watch the Olympic torch pass nearby. When the cameras began to roll, he unfurled his banner, which he says was meant to be funny and get him on television. The principal took it from him, and suspended him for 10 days.
Mr. Frederick says the suspension violated his rights. The school board insists the principal had the right to confiscate the banner and punish the student because the language undermined its teachings about the dangers of illegal drugs. The San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled for Mr. Frederick, citing the 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which held that students have the right to free speech, which can be suppressed only when the speech disrupts school activities.
What’s depressing is that almost 40 years after Tinker v. Des Moines we’ve gone from protecting free speech — in the case of Tinker, a principled stand against the Vietnam War — to a technical defense of boorish behavior. Sure, technically the Alaska student has a right to free speech off campus. But when you look at the details, you should be worried about where we’re headed.
You would think that if a child took advantage of a warm-and-fuzzy opportunity like a freakin’ Olympic torch run to act like a buffoon, his parents would cooperate with a principal to punish his boorish behavior. Instead, we have parents indulging the supremely childish fantasy to sue the school’s ass, like all the way to the Supreme Court, dude.
So, yeah, technically the student is right, but to debate that part of it is beside the point. This is really just another example of parents taking an overly litigious and unnecessarily adversarial stand against the schools — another reminder of why the school system is failing kids.
Now Playing: Episode 361
The Presidential campaign gets nasty while the banking crisis goes international.
Links Mentioned: The coveted Buckley endorsement … and the Brooks non-endorsement … the European banking bailout vs. the U.S. bailout redux … Frank Rich … GM and Chrysler get cozy.
Great point.
I wonder — do charter schools or similar privatization schemes help alleviate this problem? That is, if a parent was forced to choose a school, would they be less likely to “turn” on it? It would seem that you’d inject a certain kind of buyer’s remorse into the situation: it’s harder to criticize something you brought on yourself than it is to criticize something that’s been forced on you.
It’d bet that if you examined parents’ attitudes, you’d find that the parents who consciously selected a school for their kids (be it a private, charter, or public magnet school) have a more favorable attitude toward that school.
Yes, definitely — making a simple choice about your kid’s education means that you are that much more invested in the system. As it is now, there’s this adversarial relationship between the parent/child and the system — the monolithic board of ed.
Charter schools help alleviate this, but you don’t even have to go that far. Simply creating theme schools, for example (also magnet schools, but “magnet schools” don’t always mean the same thing) in the public system that parents and children chose to go to would also inject that sense of ownership about the decision.
“School choice” is a much maligned idea but choice doesn’t always have to involve privatization — important to remember when you hear about ideas to reform the public school system.
Seattle Public Schools are like this — you can send your kid to any school in the city (but they also have a forced de-segregation component that recently went to the Supreme Court). And it works, maybe even too well. People develop such strong allegiances to their particular school that any Superintendant who tries to close one of the schools ends up in a political firestorm.
I think there’s an analogy there to health insurance. As much as I’d like universal health care, I worry that it will be too easy for people to sour on it. One or two public screw-ups and it will taint people’s impression of the whole system.
Better, in that sense, to have subsidized insurance plans. This way you can at least have the illusion of choice and feel like you’ve made a commitment to one plan or another.
It’s kind of like cell phone companies. There are only what, 4 national cell phone companies? And yet there’s a certain kind of allegiance, a love/hate relationship that you develop over time with your provider. They’re a bureaucracy, sure, but you always have the chance to jump ship and pick another if you want to.