Re: Constitutional Right to Wear a T-Shirt?

dprewit — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:15:53 -0000

These frivolous challenges by minor's over their "rights" are so laughable as to make me think we've truly entered the Twilight Zone in the US and they completely underscore the downfall of the family as the first line of authority and education. When parents sue a school over the "free speech rights" of their child, taking hard won, scarce, and invaluable resources out of the educational system, we've truly lost our way. Hamstringing educators' authority to make and enforce rules and standards of behavior, dress, conduct, and comportment does nothing to teach the "me" generation that in the real world, you do have to follow the rules, you do have to obey the laws of the land, you do have to comport yourself with dignity and courtesy or suffer the consequences.

When my nephew had his cell phone confiscated, text messages read, and message correspondents sanctioned by the principle (at the private school he attends) for breaking the rules of A) having the cell phone on his person during class; and B) texting during class, he immediately started asserting his "rights" ... My sister's answer? "You're SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, the ONLY "rights" you have are the ones I give you when you've EARNED them by behaving responsibly. You broke the rules, take responsibility and suffer the consequences." His cell phone stays in his locker or in his car when he's at school now and it didn't take a lawsuit to do that, just a parent willing to act like one and teachers willing to teach the life lessons everyone needs.

Isn't our educational system struggling enough without making it even harder by encouraging students to ignore the rules they don't like in the name of "rights"... Wouldn't a better lesson have been for the student's parents to encourage him to meet with the administrators and find out why the code is in place, how to change it if it needed changing (he might have found out that there were very valid reasons for the code to be in place that he could agree with), and then set about doing the work to make that happen (if he still thought it was a worthwhile effort)? And in fact, this would have truly accomplished one of the points brought up in the suit to "learn more about the political process." Filing suit taught him only that if you don't like something, take the easy way out and sue over it, hand it off to someone else, not a very valuable learning experience when looking at how many people and situations he's likely to run up against that he doesn't like in the rest of his lifetime, no lifeskills development in negotiations and processes, or even getting along with others.

Truly a very sad commentary on the state of parenting. Just my thoughts.

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Re: Constitutional Right to Wear a T-Shirt?