Student News Articles and Freedom of Speech

Student News Articles and Freedom of Speech

  • Submitted By: ikmto
  • Date Submitted: 03/11/2009 7:47 AM
  • Category: Miscellaneous
  • Words: 580
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 1425

{text:bookmark-start} Student news articles and freedom of speech {text:bookmark-end} "First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years." "The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures - Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes." TINKER v. DES MOINES SCHOOL DIST., 393 U.S. 503 (1969) is one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court cases on student rights. Yes, it is a growing trend that schools are starting to follow their students every move online, and take disciplinary action on what they find there. To those of you scratching your heads and wondering why schools are allowed to exert such draconian control over every aspect of a child's life even outside of school, well, they technically aren't. But this has not stopped schools from trying, and so we have kids being suspended, or even expelled, for the opinions and statements they make online. Students have been arrested on charges of making terroristic threats for their online poetry or song lyrics, and students have been expelled for criticizing learning conditions or school policies. Schools defend their actions by claiming they are trying to stop the spread of libelous or defamatory postings, but even...

Similar Essays