You took Diamond’s issue of wearing the buttons – jumped to a case involving dialog – and proclaim that “freedom of speech” allows the buttons. Well it doesn’t. But you would have Diamond and students reading this go to war over the buttons.

I’m not saying that Diamond would organize a student strike over teachers being told to leave the Obama buttons in their cars. But that is the way she thinks. There is a difference between dialog in the classroom and wearing the buttons and that difference isn’t being picked up on by Diamond because she hasn’t been taught to be careful in throwing around “rights”. That kind of incaution can have life altering effects in the streets where these kids get hurt.

The same incaution is what I’m working on when I say things that you interpret as my thinking that kids should be seen and not heard.

No, I’m not saying that kids should be seen and not heard, although it’s often not a bad idea. I am saying that until they are experienced in various areas that should be especially careful in interactions with Meter Maids, Cops, Teachers, Banks & Credit Card Companies and public discourse. Children are in no position to go one on one with authority figures and generally shouldn’t defy them.

The public school students are more likely to be taught indiscipline and incaution. They are taught this way by public school teachers. The students do not wear well for it. Especially the minority students, many of wich would have better lives if they were trained with greater discipline. For various reasons I believe the private school students learn better and know better. We should have the public school kids getting more of this and if we have to increase the Charters and close public campuses because the public schools won’t change, so be it.

http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/news/profession/2007/10/05/ew_freespeech_web.h19.html

I am not a lawyer, nor do I wear political paraphenelia to work (as I don’t think it is appropriate), so this is only of passing interest to me.

The point of my five seconds of research was only to show that the free speech issue for teachers is a live one, not a “fantasy” as you keep saying.

But now I’ve done another minute of research and found out that the issue is hotly contested. To wit, the Supremes recently decided not to hear an appeal on a ruling that does limit teacher speech:

The U.S. Supreme Court declined last week to hear the appeal of a former Indiana teacher who alleged that she lost her job because she had discussed the Iraq war in her classroom.

The appeal was one of hundreds turned down by the justices on Oct. 1, the first day of their new term.

The case was notable because it led to a fairly broad ruling by a federal appeals court that teachers have virtually no First Amendment protection for statements made in the classroom, even on a topic of such public importance as the war.

Deborah A. Mayer was a first-year teacher in the 11,000-student Monroe County, Ind., school district in January 2003 when she used an edition of TIME for Kids in a current-events discussion about the then-impending war.

According to court papers, the magazine reported on a peace march in Washington to protest the prospect of a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ms. Mayer was asked by a student in her multiage classroom of 3rd through 6th graders if she would ever participate in such a peace demonstration. She told them that when she had driven by recent peace marches in Bloomington, Ind., related to the Iraq situation, she had honked her horn in response to a sign that said, “Honk for Peace.”

“And then I went on to say that I thought it was important for people to seek out peaceful solutions to problems before going to war, and that we train kids to be mediators on the playground so that they can seek out peaceful solutions to their own problems,” Ms. Mayer said in a deposition in the case.

Some parents complained to the principal about the brief discussion, and the principal barred Ms. Mayer from discussing “peace” in her classroom, according to court papers. The principal also canceled the school’s traditional “peace month.”

“We absolutely do not, as a school, promote any particular view on foreign policy related to the situation with Iraq,” Principal Victoria Rogers said in a memo to school personnel at the time. “That is not our business.”

The school district decided in April 2003 not to renew Ms. Mayer’s contract for the next school year. The teacher alleged that it was because of her comments on Iraq, and she sued the district on First Amendment and related grounds.

A Captive Audience
A U.S. District Court judge in Indianapolis granted summary judgment last year to the school district. In a Jan. 24 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in Chicago, ruled unanimously for the district as well.

“The First Amendment does not entitle primary and secondary teachers, when conducting the education of captive audiences, to cover topics, or advocate viewpoints, that depart from the curriculum adopted by the school system,” the appeals court said.

The 7th Circuit judges held that Ms. Mayer’s comments were the type of on-the-job speech by a public employee that merited no First Amendment protection under a 2006 Supreme Court decision known as Garcetti v. Ceballos.

In their Supreme Court appeal, lawyers for Ms. Mayer noted that the justices had stopped short of applying their Garcetti ruling to public education.

“Teachers need to know if their in-class speech is ever entitled to First Amendment protection and, if so, when,” Ms. Mayer’s appeal said.

The justices had expressed some interest in the case. When the school district initially declined to file an answer to the teacher’s appeal, the high court requested a response. The district’s brief may have convinced the justices that the case would not be suitable for deciding the teacher-speech question.

According to the Monroe County district, some parents had complained about Ms. Mayer’s “demeanor, conduct towards students, and professional competency” even before the discussion of Iraq. During the second semester, the principal had placed Ms. Mayer on an improvement plan, but the teacher’s “job performance progressively deteriorated,” the district said in its court papers.

“Ms. Mayer’s speech was not the motivating factor for the nonrenewal of her teaching contract,” the district said.

The justices declined without comment to hear the teacher’s appeal in Mayer v. Monroe County Community School Corp. (Case No. 06-1657).

You think the wrongful termination suit mentioned above equals the schools being unable to block candidate buttons worn by public schools teachers? Have you read the appellate decision? Was it a published decision? Did it ever say such a thing?

And you teach…

What you have cited doesn’t give teachers the right to wear candidate buttons on duty. Try again.

You see, you equate the free speech right to being able to do what you want, when you want. And that is what you are no doubt teaching your adolescent charges who only need an excuse to go out and try to fly on Icarus’ wings.

Which is part of how OUSD and similar urban schools produce so many Boxcar Willies and female counterparts – and from largely minority kids.

Many government workers are not even allowed to participate in partisan campaigns off duty – much less wear campaign buttons to work. This is not news. The reasons are obvious – but the federal workers and the state judges banned from going to rallies, signing endorsement cards and kept from publicly supporting a candidate bear more of a burden than a public school teacher. If there is case law saying the teachers have some right to wear buttons banners and sashes to work during a campaign for a politician that’s news to me. Maybe it’s a 9th Circuit Case.

My point – which I doubt you are capable of seeing – is that “rights” are never absolute. Rights are frequently subject to time, place and manner restrictions and can be lost when balanced against competing rights. This is what the kiddies don’t want to hear and are not taught. The public school kids are not infrequently given a little knowledge which is a dangerous thing, especially when mixed with toxic self-esteem.

But then sometimes teachers are too full of fantasy “rights” also and it rubs off. If a teacher is experienced in a subject – such as biology – their experience and opinions are noteworthy. In law you want opinions from those who know the issues.

As far as your appraisal of my positions – go for it. I enjoy reading your side of this. You are exactly the reason our kids are so unarmed in dealing with life on the streets. They aren’t being prepared in the public schools for work and adult life. And at 18 they are like puppies on a roadway. Tell your kids to run their mouths in season and out. Tell them they should act whenever the impulse moves them. Tell them they have “The RIGHT” to do it all.

This kind of “education” is the difference between those that can make it and those that don’t. My way is more conservative, yours isn’t. Do you have a problem with that?

Kentucky teacher’s free-speech lawsuit reinstated

By The Associated Press

11.12.01

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SHELBYVILLE, Ky. — A fifth-grade teacher who allowed actor Woody Harrelson to speak to her pupils about the merits of industrial hemp will have her day in court to argue that she was fired because of her choice of speakers.

In a vehement opinion issued Nov. 9, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that a lower court erred when it threw out Donna Cockrel’s lawsuit against the Shelby County Public School District before the case went to trial.

The appellate court’s three-member panel unanimously said schoolteachers retain the right to free speech not just in the schoolhouse, but also in the classroom.

“Teachers don’t lose their First Amendment rights because they’re teachers,” said Cockrel’s attorney, Eugene Mooney. “There’s not a special rule for teachers — not even fifth-grade ones.”

Actually, yes, teachers have the right to wear political pins at work unless they are disruptive. It has been challenged in the courts, and while there is no definitive line-in-the-sand on political expression, the example given here would almost certainly be allowed in most courts.

But you just wanted to give your stock screed about Kids Today Should Be Seen But Not Heard. I understand.

Refusal to learn the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and instead coming up with silly and childish notions of “rights” is part of why so many (especially minority) teens get themselves in all kinds of trouble in our courts and in their personal lives.

I’m not saying this is your personal failing – you have not been educated. Your school has failed you. At your age you should be better grounded in what a person can get away with and not, and why.

The attitude of entitlement you demonstrate is no different than pets/children playing in the roadway. Aren’t they cute – aren’t they dead – send in their replacements.

So please cite a published Federal Appellate case stating that public school teachers are entitled to wear campaign buttons for a candidate? Just one case – ever – in 200 years of US History. Or how about a State Appellate Court case on the same point as to any state constitution?

Or has your school taught you anything at all about how “the law” is delineated? At your age, they should have. You should be able to do basic research for a code section or a case, at least conceptually.

If you go out into the street or even stay at home and interact with the world, knowing what your “rights” are can make the difference between a felony or not. And that’s the problem I see all the time. People – often your age through 30′s – doing things and talking about it without any clue that what they are doing is a crime and even a serious one. You may think I’m jumping the subject – your perceived “rights” over to criminal courts. No. People who “graduate” from the public schools have no clue of their duties and obligations under the law and instead run around town with a toxic opinion of a long list of “rights” that never did exist. Then they cry when they get taken down.

We are heading into historically hard times. Keeping a good job, or staying alive – may soon depend on judgment and training. Urban Public school graduates are developing neither. Even that wisdom that something is “too good to be true” is missing from them, it’s not been excercised. And it’s too bad.

The cognitively gifted and their children get richer and the rest of us just have all these problems for some reason…

Brave New World.