Freedom of Speech in the Public Classroom... Need your help/court cases

[Reason]

Need links/sources/court cases concerning freedom of speech in a public school.

My younger brother is in high school and recently had an assignment to give a presentation on a political issue.

He chose the legalization of marijuana and when he came in with his poster

He was told that marijuana was not an appropriate topic and was forced to keep his poster sealed in his backpack...

Later that day the teacher overheard him discussing the issue with another student and told him that if he wanted to keep pursuing this that he would need to start calling parents and pursue disciplinary action...

Later that day he sent my brother an email that said...

"Politics aside ****,

You well know that this is not an appropriate classroom conversation. When you are consenting adult, you may have whatever conversation, and belief you wish.

Just not in my classroom.


Don't forget,, you are a " MINOR".

You get a choice when you get to vote...

~~~~

So far I have told him that,

There is nothing inappropriate about calm intellectual discussion.

Ever.

Your teacher is an idiot and doesn't understand the first amendment apparently, it's called freedom of speech.

You aren't harming anyone or negatively impacting your fellow students ability to learn therefore you are absolutely within your right to speak about your position on marijuana.

You could say that Stalin is the greatest guy ever if you want and people can be offended all they want but they can't shut you up.

The only time a public school can silence you is if they can make a convincing argument that your actions are preventing other students from learning/doing w/e they are supposed to be doing in class. (ie: a shirt with a picture of dead bodies that causes other students to throw up hence preventing them from going about their classroom activities)

 

[bkreigh]

Are you parents aware and if so what do they have to say on the issue? Hopefully they would back your brother and give the teacher a piece of their mind especially if there were no subjects on the black list. The teacher left the subject wide open and is to blame.

 

[Reason]

Are you parents aware and if so what do they have to say on the issue? Hopefully they would back your brother and give the teacher a piece of their mind especially if there were no subjects on the black list. The teacher left the subject wide open and is to blame.

My parents are aware and agree with my brother but they don't have a steadfast resolve for challenging the system, they see it more as making unnecessary waves that will just cause problems and not accomplish a lot.

 

[InterestedParticipant]

Need links/sources/court cases concerning freedom of speech in a public school.

The is not about your brother's "Freedom of Speech," but rather the government's (ie public school's) power to stifle your brother's inalienable rights. I would simply tell your brother that if the government can show him where they get the power to stifle his inalienable rights (ie. in this case, to speak freely), then he will honor their request. Otherwise, he will proceed how he sees fit. The onus is on the gov't to show that they were granted the powers, that they claim they have, by the people.

 

[dannno]

He needs to make 100 posters and glue them up everywhere.

Ok, maybe not.. But that would be pretty cool.

 

[jsu718]

As far as speech issues the courts have found almost exclusively on the sides of the schools... it's not really an issue I would take up until we have decent judges since with the system we have it is just bound to be fruitless.

As far as the "blacklist" of topics, I guarantee you that it was in the student handbook they receive at the beginning of the year and almost always are required to sign and return... one of the reasons that the courts can't do much.

This also is coming from the perspective of me being an actual teacher... I would never allow that sort of topic to be discussed in the classroom just because it would cause ME to be the target of the lawsuit from other parents rather than them targeting the free speech issue which falls on the school administration and the district policies.

 

[InterestedParticipant]

As far as speech issues the courts have found almost exclusively on the sides of the schools... it's not really an issue I would take up until we have decent judges since with the system we have it is just bound to be fruitless.

As far as the "blacklist" of topics, I guarantee you that it was in the student handbook they receive at the beginning of the year and almost always are required to sign and return... one of the reasons that the courts can't do much.

This also is coming from the perspective of me being an actual teacher... I would never allow that sort of topic to be discussed in the classroom just because it would cause ME to be the target of the lawsuit from other parents rather than them targeting the free speech issue which falls on the school administration and the district policies.

What, are you saying that the parents sign away their children's inalienable rights by entering into some contract with the school by signing a "student handbook"?

If that is the case, do you have an example of a student handbook you can point us to? I'd like to read the relevant parts.

 

[teacherone]

fuckin great poster! give props to your little bro.

i took the california proficiency exam when i was 16 and went to the junior college at 17. later transferred to berkeley, did 2 years, earned my degree and graduated with no debt.

maybe you guys have some alternatives. he's obviously too smart for high- school.

 

[Kludge]

Disciplinary action against him during class is his best chance to garner sympathy, IMO. Forget the content of his speech -- if you want people to hate an idea, just have a person they hate support it.

(until the admin threaten expulsion, anyway)

(oh, and you might want to have your parents excuse a bad grade from that class, eh?)

 

[Bruno]

If he treats it as a war protest on the War on Drugs, perhaps he could invoke Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District. Might be a stretch....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District

Background of the case
In December 1965, Des Moines, Iowa residents John F. Tinker (15 years old), John's younger sister Mary Beth Tinker, (13 years old) and their friend Christopher Eckhardt (16 years old) decided to wear black armbands showing peace symbols on them to their schools (high school for John and Christopher, junior high for Mary Beth) in protest of the Vietnam War and supporting the Christmas Truce called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy (brother of President John F. Kennedy). The school board apparently heard rumor of this and chose to pass a policy banning the wearing of armbands to school. Violating students would be suspended and allowed to return to school after agreeing to comply with the policy. Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt chose to violate this policy, and the next day John Tinker also did so. All were suspended from school until after January 1, 1966, when their protest had been scheduled to end.

A suit was not filed until after the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached their family, and the ICLU agreed to help the family with the lawsuit. Their parents, in turn, filed suit in U.S. District Court, which upheld the decision of the Des Moines school board. A tie vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit meant that the U.S. District Court's decision continued to stand, and forced the Tinkers and Eckhardts to appeal to the Supreme Court directly. The case was argued before the court on November 12, 1968.

[edit] The Supreme Court's decision
The court's 7 to 2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue in Tinker was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam," and, finding that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption, held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech.

Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II dissented. Black, who had long believed that disruptive "symbolic speech" was not constitutionally protected, wrote "While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases." Black argued that the Tinkers' behavior was indeed disruptive and declared, "I repeat that if the time has come when pupils of state-supported schools, kindergartens, grammar schools, or high schools, can defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary."

Harlan dissented on the grounds that he "[found] nothing in this record which impugns the good faith of respondents in promulgating the armband regulation."

 

[Bruno]

From the email:

"Politics aside ****,

You well know that this is not an appropriate classroom conversation. When you are consenting adult, you may have whatever conversation, and belief you wish.

Just not in my classroom.


Don't forget,, you are a " MINOR".

You get a choice when you get to vote...

Are other things not legal for minors to do off-limits to classroom discussion? Minors can't fight in wars, but I'm sure there is plenty of discussion about that. DARE comes in and talks about the dangers of drugs, why can't there be any refuting of those claims? Should students just sit in class silently and obediently listening to any crap the government spews in their direction?

 

[rpfan2008]

I think your brother should change his topic to [URL="http://grandrants.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/%E2%80%9Csafe-school-czar%E2%80%9D-defends-graphic-classroom-descriptions-of-gay-sex-acts-to-children/"]Whether fisting should be taught to underage school children[/URL].

 

[TinCanToNA]

Bruno, you missed what the teacher was saying. It is very clear. The teacher is saying that minors do not get to choose the topics of discussion. It has nothing to do with marijuana or war or any specific topic. The choice denied to minors, according to the teacher, is on what topics to discuss.

If it's for an assignment, meaning it affects your grade, then the teacher is typically the final arbiter of in-bounds and out-of-bounds material. Ultimately I have no real problem with this most of the time. If I'm in a history class, I don't want some fucking nutcase constantly ranting and raving about the melting temperature of steel with regards to their ignorant opinions about 9/11, unless and until the topic of conspiracy theories or 9/11 or a related topic is brought up.


Shame on the teacher for not outlining clearly the topics available. The teacher should be more accommodating in that case, but should still retain the power to arbitrate.

 

[InterestedParticipant]

Are other things not legal for minors to do off-limits to classroom discussion? Minors can't fight in wars, but I'm sure there is plenty of discussion about that. DARE comes in and talks about the dangers of drugs, why can't there be any refuting of those claims? Should students just sit in class silently and obediently listening to any crap the government spews in their direction?

John Taylor Gatto, a 30+ yr. teacher in NYC, will tell you what education is for.

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1

1. The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong."
   
2. The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
   
3. The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
   
4. The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me).
   
5. In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth.
   
6. In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

He should dress up as the pope one day and conduct a prayer for the entire class, before class.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

the case from 1965 I was going to cite as well.. forgot the name of it.. But he could make little pot leafs on armbands and wear those....

Of course the SCOTUS has struck down certain speech that encouraged illegal behavior.. like a sign telling people to "smoke pot" because that's illegal.... But if hes just having a discussion with another classmate.. who the hell cares??

I mean the whole point in protecting freedom of speech is protecting speech that people dont like.. If everybody liked everything you said, you wouldnt need any protection.

if you want to share the guys email address im sure alot of us would be happy to tell the guy our opinions...

if it were a private school then fine.. but its not.. its public.

 

[Bruno]

Bruno, you missed what the teacher was saying. It is very clear. The teacher is saying that minors do not get to choose the topics of discussion. It has nothing to do with marijuana or war or any specific topic. The choice denied to minors, according to the teacher, is on what topics to discuss.

If it's for an assignment, meaning it affects your grade, then the teacher is typically the final arbiter of in-bounds and out-of-bounds material. Ultimately I have no real problem with this most of the time. If I'm in a history class, I don't want some fucking nutcase constantly ranting and raving about the melting temperature of steel with regards to their ignorant opinions about 9/11, unless and until the topic of conspiracy theories or 9/11 or a related topic is brought up.


Shame on the teacher for not outlining clearly the topics available. The teacher should be more accommodating in that case, but should still retain the power to arbitrate.

I didn't miss his point, I just didn't agree with it. He asked them to chose a political topic. Marijuana legalization, while a "hot topic" is also a legitimate political topic openly being discussed in many states right now.

 

[Reason]

to make things even more ridiculous, a different teacher from another class is actually using the marijuana debate as an assigned topic of debate lol

 

[InterestedParticipant]

to make things even more ridiculous, a different teacher from another class is actually using the marijuana debate as an assigned topic of debate lol

I highly recommend the movie Brazil or Bananas..... both clearly illustrate the madness of governments that are out of control.

 

[R25288]

Tinker vs Des Moines

As the 1st of the 3 plaintiffs suspended from Roosevelt HS in Des Moines, Iowa, in December, 1965, for wearing a black armband which established Student Rights in America, I just wanted to add that I enjoyed all of your comments.