Posted on 05/28/2011 9:56:44 AM PDT by Libloather
I agree with you we do live in amazing times. But this time like every other time is fraught with dangers of every conceivable kind.
I filter internet access at home for my kids and I don’t want the ACLU and the government doing an end round on my parental authority at school.
As far as I am concerned high school students have no free speech rights as long as they are on campus.
Just to play devil’s advocate... I assume you believe high school students should have “free speech rights” off campus. For instance, if your child attended a political event with you, I am assuming you believe he has a right to be there free of police harassment, independent of the fact that you brought him. If he attended a rally you didn’t like (but nothing illegal), you may ground him, but you would fight for his right to be there if the police arrested him, right?
So why would students lose such rights by stepping onto campus? Aren’t school administrators the student version of “big government?” If a student perceives its decisions as arbitrary and irrational, should she have no recourse independent of her parents?
I think that, of necessity, the political rights of children must be on a sliding scale. The courts have held that there is some level of political rights that cannot be denied even children, just as there is some level of political rights that cannot be denied even prisoners.
Prisoners must be provided the ability to write letters, read books, etc. so long as doing so doesn’t compromise security.
School children must be provided the right to political activism so long as it does not disturb the functioning of the school.
These are the prevailing judicial approaches, and they make some sense to me. I do understand not wanting to have your parenting circumvented.
Actually, maybe I don’t understand. I don’t have children, though I hope to, one day. My sympathies, probably due to my age, are more closely aligned with the students. I still remember feeling outraged, despondent, and helpless, under the yoke of—what i felt to be—arbitrary adult authority.
At that age, I thought I was smarter than my parents and teachers. Whether or not I was right, I do realize in retrospect that their authority was not “arbitrary.” However, that doesn’t mean that they were correct. I believe children should have some independent basis of protection for asserting political rights.
I should note that my response addressed your post in the abstract, without regard to the topic of this post.
It’s a tough thing for parents to deal with, no doubt about it. But information does want to be free, and it’s going to get freer and freer. More and more children will even have mobile devices with internet access. They can go to a public library and find all of the same things. There are probably books in their school library you would find morally objectionable.
Although there are reasonable outer bounds, a school cannot incorporate the moral and political peculiarities of every parent when it’s designing a policy on censorship. Public schooling (and all mass-schooling, frankly) sacrifices individualized pedagogy for the sake of efficiency. If a parent finds himself too outside the moral consensus of the society or the other parents, he has little choice but to home school or find a private school more to his liking. That has been the case even before the internet, and I’m not sure there’s another solution to it.
Students lose their free speech rights when walking on to campus for the same reason they lose it when the walk in the door of their home.
It has a legal term called “in loco parentus” meaning “In the place of the parent”
It means that the school has the responsibilities and rights of a parent while the child is on the grounds. These rights and responsibilities are necessary to main order.
Prisoners must be provided the ability to write letters, read books, etc. so long as doing so doesn’t compromise security. School children must be provided the right to political activism so long as it does not disturb the functioning of the school.
Students are not prisoners and they are not adults. (Personally I don’t believe that prisoners convicted of felonies should have any rights beyond those of the right to petition and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. They certainly should not have the right to vote)
Teens do not have the same rights of adults nor the same responsibilities as adults. They live under the protection of their parents and so are under the control of their parents. In many states a teen can declare themselves emancipated and become legally an adult and free themselves of the parents control. However they then lose the protections of their parents legally.
Whether or not I was right, I do realize in retrospect that their authority was not “arbitrary.” However, that doesn’t mean that they were correct.
Well the beginning of wisdom!
Remember that adults must maintain order; to do that they must have authority in the eyes of the majority of the children in their care. (They are legally and morally liable for the safety of the children numerous school districts are presently being sued for failure in that responsibility).
In my opinion political activity on campus should be limited to voting for student body president. Unless the teacher and school administration decide to have a mock election during the political season any political activity on campus should be forbidden. Such activities can be very disruptive when the hot heads of youth begin to butt up against each other.
Under the guidance of adults outside of school I am all in favor of intelligent youths getting involved with politics.
Call me a conservative but I believe that schools being a part of the community should error on the side of be more restrictive rather than less. The ACLU should stay out of it.
It is a mistake to treat teenagers as adults in the modern age when it comes to sex. There are way too many deleterious influences already trying to tell them that sex is all about having a good time.
Sex has consequences and these websites that were blocked do not have as one of their goals to enlighten teens to that fact.
Teenagers are more immature today than they were 100 years ago and should be treated as the clueless creatures that they are.
“Math and science are godless, and literature is better viewed from the teller’s perspective, not from God’s.”
That may just be the most illogical thing I have ever read.
Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy [is] understanding.”
The idea of “in loco parentis” is helpful in understanding your position, and your position is not at all an unreasonable one.
However, I would suggest that like all analogies, the concept has its limits.
I agree, and the Supreme Court agrees, that it is a primary responsibility of schools to maintain safety and order. When the Court has held that students have political rights, they have said that schools can still regulate student speech to the extent that the speech would “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.” (Tinker v. Des Moines is the landmark case on this issue, if you’re curious).
However, analogy notwithstanding, school administrators are not the students’ parents. And so, while they have the responsibility, “in loco parentis,” to keep the kids safe and to maintain order, I would argue you reach the limits of the analogy when you talk about instilling a political or moral orthodoxy that is outside the mainstream. I think most conservatives would agree with that.
The problem is that “the mainstream” vis-a-vis homosexuality and sexuality in general is moving ever further from the conservative position. And so I see the problem as not one of student rights, or school administration, but the shifting mores of society at large.
Could you be more specific? With sincere respect for your faith, I don’t consider Proverbs to be binding authority on school administration.
I guess I should be more specific in turn. If one believes in God, obviously nothing is “godless.” What I meant is that while God can inform the metaphysical understanding of everything that is, his existence or non-existence has no bearing on learning to do calculus or chemistry.
It has a bit more bearing on literature and the arts, but it will still be relevant in a sense personal to each person, which cannot really be taught in a classroom unless everyone is of the same faith.
That's a lie.
Responsible parents can install “filters” in their children in the form of education and truth. It may not work every time in every child, but it is free and it a good thing to do.
Very true.
Oh, I would also point out that if you take the “in loco parentis” analogy too far, it can easily be turned around on you.
After all, the argument would go, the school is “parent” to not only your child, but also to his gay classmates. It could be that in their “best parental judgment,” the best way to maintain order and discipline is to prevent “sibling rivalry” by teaching that it is OK to be gay.
We weren’t talking about binding authority on school administration. We were talking about your opinion that math and science are godless.
They may be taught from a godless perspective in public schools but they are not godless. All knowledge and understanding comes from God therefore no true knowledge is godless. God created the world and the order that can be observed in it. Math and science are just studies of the created order of God. Anything but godless.
Also, in respect to literature, reading to gain the perspective of the author is important but even more important is defining that perspective based upon reality (ie a Christan worldview).
A true education begins and ends with the knowledge that there is a God that created us and hold us to certain standards.
See my post at 49. If I were a man of (more) faith, we would likely agree completely!
“Outside the mainstream” has become the Left’s attack language used to make traditional American normal standards of behavior seem extreme.
The reality is that the Left has and is systematically driving the American culture in to accepting deviancy as the norm.
Driving deviancy down is their plan.
They are using public schools and higher education to accomplish these goals. Tolerance and Multiculturalism are their primary tools.
The United States is being balkanized.
Without a common language, a common standard of behavior and a common culture no nation can survive.
I actually saw it and attempted to answer both of your posts in one. There is no reason why you cannot be a man of more faith.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
I pray that the Lord will bless you with understanding of His wonderous glory and magnificent grace.
You may be totally right. I see the stories about schools overreaching with the liberal social agenda, but I don’t know how pervasive it is. It’s been awhile since I had any personal experience with public schools, and without statistics, these stories are just anecdotes, and so such things could be very common or not common at all, as far as I know.
I have a friend that teaches abstinence education in the local public schools (very uncommon). He attends state meetings here in WV with other sex education programs. They are pushing the homosexual agenda hard in the WV public schools.
Sex education should have remained a minor chapter in a Biology text book.
Of course the Left is always pushing those limits and attacking the prerogatives of parents and forever using the courts to expand the power of the state over the raising of children.
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