Thanks to Lu Cifer for this tip.
Here ya go! This is a good example of why I home school.
My family would like our fellow Edwards supporters to know that one of his high school supporters in Texas, my son, has received an IN-SCHOOL SUSPENSION FOR WEARING A JOHN EDWARDS T-SHIRT TO SCHOOL, having been told that it is in violation of the new school dress code. Clearly, this violates his protected right to free speech, and is the subject of a federal suit that he anticipates filing within the week, should the situation not be resolved to our satisfaction. We called the campaign to notify, but (understandably) had trouble getting through to anyone who might make the Senator aware of how deeply his supporters feel about his candidacy in Texas. I think this issue would interest Senator Edwards and his campaign staff. We ask that fellow Edwards supporters make both the campaign and their own school districts aware of the fact that political speech does not stop at the schoolhouse door!
Read the comments HERE.
School should be about educating young people to reason through their individual beliefs and opinions and expressing those individual opinions in a constructive way.
This is a good time to remember that we have an organization that can fight for us when these things happen–ACLU. Don’t wait to join!
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I think this is something the national “big boy” blogs might be interested in.
🙂
good question you ask in your diary on dk regarding what would have happened if the student had worn a different, presumably more seemingly appealing type of “political” (or even religious) t shirt. you should write that family and suggest the student try that experiment, although one would think it would apply to all. or knowing they are in the national spotlight might change the school’s response. but it would still bring more attn to the issue. and they also might be foolish eno to respond differently, which would make it one whopper of a story)
Let me speak as a conservative blogger who is also a teacher.
There simply is not enough here to be sure that there is even a problem.
If the school or district has a uniform policy, it may be that the shirt is outside that policy based upon its failure to conform with the requirement (for example if it requires a plain white polo shirt).
Secondly, if the school has a policy against shirts with any writing or logos that are not school related, the actions in question would be legitimate.
Absent such a policy, however, the actions would be illegitimate and almost certainly violate Tinker and other relevant court decisions on student speech.
To know if there is a problem, we need to know the name of the school, the district, and the actual details of the policy. The fact that these details are missing make it impossible to know if there is a violation of student rights. To be honest, the lack of that information makes it impossible to know if this story is even true.
rwr, I realize there is not enough information and I was hoping to turn up more but that hasn’t happened so far. Maybe it’s a hoax. I don’t know yet.
At any rate, schools and teachers should use politics to teach kids how to think and reason things through better. Then we wouldn’t have situations like the Iraq quagmire where a dishonest administration has lied and willfully ignorant people believe it.
These tactics are not endemic to this situation. I am a Jewish landlord in Bloomington, Indiana, and have fallen prey to an anti-semitic city government, run by an ex-con mayor, Mark Kruzan. Over the past two years, Kruzan and his cohorts in the Legal Department and the Housing Department, Kevin Robling and Lisa Abbott, have systematically fined me for a multitude of ordinance violations ranging from my grass being a few inches too long to allegations of “alarming” occupancy density, such as situations in which four individuals legally occupy a 4-bedroom home.
Here are links to a few blogs about these experiences:
http://underoccupied.blogspot.com
http://markkruzan.blogspot.com