Bong Hits 4 SCOTUS
By Mitch Berg
It’s the same old story:
- Boy unfurls giggly, pseudo-provocative sign at a school event.
- Principal suspends boy.
- Boy and his lawyers spend six years pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
Let’s join them, shall we?
[Joseph] Frederick filed suit, saying his First Amendment rights were infringed. A federal appeals court in San Francisco agreed, concluding the school could not show Frederick had disrupted the schools educational mission by showing a banner off campus.
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr argued for the principal that a school “must be able to fashion its educational mission” without undue hindsight from the courts.
Now, let’s get this straight; the “incident” happened six years ago, and the kid won (albeit at the Ninth Circuit, which is sort of like a group of Phyllis Kahns in robes) – and the school district took it to the Supremes?
That brought swift skepticism from some justices.
“There was no classroom here,” said Kennedy.
“This was education outside a classroom,” replied Starr of the torch relay observation.
“What did it disrupt on the sidewalk?” asked Souter of Fredericks banner.
“The educational mission of the school,” was Starrs answer.
“The school can make any rule that it wants on any subject restrictive of speech, and if anyone violates it, its disruptive?” asked Souter.
Ding ding ding. Give a cigar to David Souter.
Welcome to life in a public school – where a parent, in addition to chauffeur, short order cook, taskmaster and sales manager, needs to be a lawyer to boot.
Justice Samuel Alito, alone among his conservative bench mates, appeared sharply critical of the schools position
“I find that a very, very disturbing argument,” he said, “because schools have and they can define their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech thats inconsistent with educational missions.”
I’m tempted to get my daughter to make a sign – “Christians 4 Reagan” – and see what happens.
Let me leave aside my well-established cynicism about the public schools’ “educational mission” (and I do suspect that an awful lot of kids learned much more about American civics and government through this case than they ever did in class. Indeed, if my daughter’s last public school history teacher is any indication, they’d probably learn more American history watching soap operas. But I digress). And don’t bother that the “war on drugs” is a quagmire in a way that Vietnam never was and Iraq never will be, which has killed more Americans than both wars put together, for a moment.
The answer, on the part of the school (an arm of government) in response to this frankly dumb, sophomoric provocation is not to throw yet another draconian, anti-“educational” rule at it (although it’s more than likely the kid learned more in ten days out of school than he’d have learned sitting on his butt in a classroom). The answer to “bad” speech – or “dumb” speech, like this kid’s doltish sign, is to explain to him and the other students why this is dumb, wrong and sophomoric.
There are so many ways to do this; have the students talk about what is sophomoric versus useful speech; learn a bit of logic, and critical thinking; expose them to humor predating John Stewart, maybe.
Of course, if public schools taught critical thinking (to other than kids on the debate team), they’d grow up into parents that questioned whether jamming kids into huge schools run on an assembly-line model – possibly the system least conducive to actually learning things ever devised – is a good idea.
And then all hell would break loose.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:07 am
It’s obvious to me we need a new political organization. I hearwith declare the formation of the Council of American Christian Associates. All of you Christ-bashers out there be warned: If you continue this provocation CACA will be all over you!
March 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am
And then, at the CACA rally when people from Febrile Atheist Nation try to flex, the CACA will hit the FAN.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Kermit, does that make the Minnesota Auxiliary of the Council of American Christian Associates = MACACA?
March 20th, 2007 at 7:34 am
No kel, that would be racist.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:26 am
ROTFL!
March 20th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Its always cool to come here and read a post I entirely agree with.
So, seriously, what’s to be done about it?
And don’t bother that the “war on drugs” is a quagmire in a way that Vietnam never was and Iraq never will be, which has killed more Americans than both wars put together, for a moment.
Yeah, this war needs to be ended. I’ve considered declaring myself an enemy combatant from time to time but I’ve been outspoken enough on the subject that I wouldn’t be likely to get away with any guerilla tactics.
So far, I’ve had no bites on the Minneapolis City List supporting my “Green City Minneapolis” which allow people to licenses for growing up to X amount of marijuana (the license would also allow city police to inspect the grow operation) and include inexpensive but serviceable grow kits. Getting marijuana profits out of the hands of the gangs would be a great first step. Granted, it wouldn’t ever be permitted but if we could somehow get the support of the state in this, we might be able to start challenging it on tenth amendment grounds.
I, of course, tend to vote for candidates that discuss curbing or ending the war on drugs but there really aren’t many of them and the few that do tend to be so fringe that without something like IRV, voting for them is like spitting in the ocean.
So, clearly this issue crosses some ideological lines – something should be able to get rolling about changing this that isn’t a fringe movement. Ideas?
As far as the schools, again, a perfect example of where the national government has overstepped their bounds – not that states were doing great with it, but it would be nice if they could at least try different things.
If it were up to me, first thing I’d do is repeal No Child Left Behind and pretty much every other national mandate on education. The NEA should pretty much just be an advisory/standards board and, to be frank, I’d prefer to see the standards portion rolled over to the ISO. Meeting standards are, of course, voluntary.
Then, personally, on a community level, I’d push for small class sizes and two adults per class – this gives the ability to deal with discipline issues better as well as have the sort of discussions and free thinking that you’re talking about. Staff salary would be the huge of public money going to the schools beyond the basics needed for infrastructure. If this increase meant that less books could be purchased or they were purchased less frequently, I think the higher teacher:student ratio would more than compensate provided that teaching methods were changed to be appropriate. Besides, honestly, math, history, literature, etc. don’t change very fast. Neither do many of the public-school level sciences – most of these kids won’t be touching advanced bio, chem and physics until late in college if at all. Additionally, most of these materials only really work well for one type of learner. I know in my case, I have a devil of a time learning from a book but sit down and show me and talk to me about it and I can do better than most. Money would go to intramural athletic programs but any additional money for extramural sports should come from booster organizations, fund raising, and other charity/community support. I’d also want to focus on very healthy food (see the Appleton Wisconsin study).
Of course, that’s me. The way I’d like to see it is my opinion has absolutely no impact on how North Dakota or Wisconsin do their schools (unless, of course, my programs work well which might inspire them to adopt them).
I’d frankly like to see a parallel to the tenth ammendment in our state consititution granting communities any right not specifically given to the state in the constitution. That way city by city could explore the most effective education programs. I do think its necessary to send some of the funding up to the state to distribute lest communities without much of a tax base be unable to get enough teachers to teach their children so it couldn’t be entirely disconnected at the city-to-state level but more autonomy means more ability to try different things means better ability to find solutions that work very well.
Ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.
Anyway, there’s got to be something we can do to change this situation.