Labels: Culture/Society, Education
Free Speech Battle Brewing over Students' Anatomical Buttons
The typical conservative response, of course, has been to criticize these idiot kids and drone on about the good ol' days when students knew their place and respected authority. Unfortunately, that kind of reaction misses the point entirely.
WINONA, Minn. - High school students here are being admonished for wearing buttons inspired by the sometimes raunchy off-Broadway hit "The Vagina Monologues" and have been threatened with expulsion if they wear risque T-shirts inspired by the show.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is offering to help students fight any consequences in what's become a battle between free speech and school conduct policies.
The trouble started last month when student Carrie Rethlefsen saw Eve Ensler's play about female sexuality and sexual violence against women, which led the teen and fellow student Emily Nixon, 17, to start wearing "I (heart) My Vagina" buttons.
Despite the threats of serious punishment, Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button to raise awareness about women's issues. As a show of support, more than 100 students have ordered T-shirts bearing "I (heart) My Vagina" for girls and "I Support Your Vagina" for boys. ...
For decades, we have drilled into the heads of children that they have a right to a public education. Allowing the state to usurp the authority of parents, we now have a system of government-run indoctrination camps funded entirely by John Q. Public--whether he actually has kids in school or not.
What else can we expect? These kids--stupid and disrespectful as they may be--have developed an entitlement mentality. They are acting precisely as anyone would expect spoiled brats to act.
Rather than get bent out of shape over the kinds of shirts and buttons they are wearing to class, why not focus on the root cause of the problem? Nothing will change until government schools are a thing of the past.
| 4/21/2005 |
Fighting a Lost Cause in Our Schools
Do students have the right of free speech in school? Smart aleck students and the ACLU think so:
1 Comments:
Excellent point. Of course, the public colleges and universities are just as bad as well. Parents prostitute their children to the government schools (K-12) and then, for example, gawk in awe concerning the fact that their children have their Christian faith utterly shipwrecked by some arrogant professor.
To prevent this, the religious “right” comes up, as they almost always do, with a "solution" that has nothing to do with the problem; we'll just create another church bureaucracy or appeal to psychology, which is based on the same secular philosophy as Darwinian evolution, a doctrine they claim to reject. Then we can keep the kids in the government schools so both parents may trot off to their jobs to support their superfluous worldly lifestyles. After all, they say, we must send them off to be missionaries (which I believe may be equated to handing a gun to a six year old and telling him to go capture the enemy base – besides, judging from the theology of many in the religious right, our kids probably wouldn't make very good converts out of the disobedient, disrespectful kids that are products of government education).
It's almost like watching Orwellian doublethink in action. Again good post (sorry for getting on the soapbox).
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home