Politics: Get An Early Start -- on Abridging Freedoms
Kara Lydersen in Alternet broadly covers the ever-growing trend toward zero-tolerance in public education. Lydersen's piece runs from metal detectors and drug sniffing dogs to African head-dresses and high-stakes testing. She also travels quickly through some major issues like banning clubs and censoring student artwork.
I've got to say that I was in high school once, and looking back, initially, I kind of thought that we had about all the freedoms we could tolerate. However, reviewing Lydersen's piece, I notice that the only one from that era still around is the old stand-by Hazelwood. This was a Supreme Court ruling that allowed schools to censor student newspapers under the grounds that the school administrators were actually the publishers of the papers. Today, Hazelwood is merely a starting point for a huge range of attacks on free expression in public education.
Honestly, I feel that we give our youth too little credit, and far too much grief. One of the situations mentioned in Lydersen's piece is the creation of gay-straight alliance clubs. Often school administrators, unsure how to deal with a group of students intent on fighting anti-gay discrimination, either shut down the gay-straight alliances or, in extreme cases, dump school-sponsored clubs altogether.
America is in far too frightful a position to be sending these messages to our next generation of leaders, voters and parents. We already enjoy a dispicable place within world opinion, and we seem to be intent on handing off an environmentally-degraded, fear-fraught nation. Why teach them a lesson about the dangers of free expression before they can ever blink free in the light of day?
Kara Lydersen in Alternet broadly covers the ever-growing trend toward zero-tolerance in public education. Lydersen's piece runs from metal detectors and drug sniffing dogs to African head-dresses and high-stakes testing. She also travels quickly through some major issues like banning clubs and censoring student artwork.
I've got to say that I was in high school once, and looking back, initially, I kind of thought that we had about all the freedoms we could tolerate. However, reviewing Lydersen's piece, I notice that the only one from that era still around is the old stand-by Hazelwood. This was a Supreme Court ruling that allowed schools to censor student newspapers under the grounds that the school administrators were actually the publishers of the papers. Today, Hazelwood is merely a starting point for a huge range of attacks on free expression in public education.
Honestly, I feel that we give our youth too little credit, and far too much grief. One of the situations mentioned in Lydersen's piece is the creation of gay-straight alliance clubs. Often school administrators, unsure how to deal with a group of students intent on fighting anti-gay discrimination, either shut down the gay-straight alliances or, in extreme cases, dump school-sponsored clubs altogether.
America is in far too frightful a position to be sending these messages to our next generation of leaders, voters and parents. We already enjoy a dispicable place within world opinion, and we seem to be intent on handing off an environmentally-degraded, fear-fraught nation. Why teach them a lesson about the dangers of free expression before they can ever blink free in the light of day?
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