Since they aren’t fining, jailing, or otherwise using the police power of the state to curtail her speech, I don’t see the first amendment violation.
This is no different than getting in trouble at work for calling the boss a douchebag…
You’re not legally obligated to go to work.
You aren’t legally obligated to run for student council, either.
No, not an urban legend at all, just history. The concept of government established, compulsory schools was a German/Prussian one, openly intended to foster “citizenship” and socioeconomic engineering. When it was promoted in the US, many of the founders made statements acknowledging that the primary aim was to get kids off the streets (and out of the real-life busniess ventures they tended to be engaged in, competeting with the capitalists who so often supported public schooling), separate them from their family and social influences, and mold them into “good” citizens and submissive workers (instead of free-thinking, self-employed individuals). Can you say “freedom of assembly”? I thought you could. Question is, will our KIDS be able to after 12 yrs of stuff like this?
John Taylor Gatto wrote the book on this subject:
The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
By John Taylor Gatto
Edition: revised, illustrated
Published by Oxford Village Press, 2001
ISBN 0945700040, 9780945700043
412 pages
You can’t legislate respect.
That’s the problem with all authority. They always feel they should be beyond criticism and will use their power to enforce it. That’s why we have a First Amendment.
High school students often have misguided ideas about what constitutes a good teacher versus, for example, a “cool” or easy teacher.
I think this is part of the fundamental problem with the government running schools: there needs to be order imposed to have an effective learning environment, but to implement that order, the government has to violate students’ Constitutional rights (with searches, name tags etc. in large schools to keep gang members from fighting and drug dealers from going on campus to sell). On the other hand, if private organization were running them, there could be contracts to surrender some of these rights in return for an orderly environment, and if a student doesn’t like it, he doesn’t get to attend. Although I think the belief that minors have the full rights of adults is just silly.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I’d err on the side of freedom. Call me crazy.
Teachers need to get thicker skins.
I don’t think it’s so much even a matter of “staying quiet.” They should be allowed to constructively criticize the actions of the school, in or out of the school, publicly or privately. The school can and should, IMO, restrict them from publicly insulting the administration, including on a blog (obviously, if they do it under an alias, nobody would know).
Part of the goal of a student council is for students to learn how to conduct themselves while in positions of responsibility. And people in positions of responsibility generally do not get to publicly insult the people they are obligated work with, even in their off hours.
Imagine Mitch McConnell starting a myspace and calling Obama a douche on it. It would be acceptable from a private citizen … it is not from a leader.
Or available online here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/
For a much shorter read, summarizing the outcomes of the modern school, more Gatto: The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher - By John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
A public school is the government for First Amendment purposes. The Man doesn’t have to bust down her door at 2am for the State to exercise its power over her. She has been punished for expressing her viewpoint. In Morse v. Frederick, a student at a public parade held up a sign reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” and was suspended. The Supreme Court never doubted that the State had acted through the school and that their action had First Amendment dimensions.
This case fails to meet the incredibly low bar set in Morse to justify the School’s reprimand – her activities were not on school time, created by the school, or even sanctioned by the school. They could not reasonably be attributed to the school. Nor did her speech advocate any illegal activity.
I was just making sure, my AP Government/AP US History teacher mentioned it a couple times, but even though for the most part he’s a great teacher I have caught him repeating one or two historical tall tales (the mostly harmless “fun fact” ones, not the viewpoint warping “George Washington was a saint” type) and it sounded JUUUST tongue in cheek enough that I thought I’d add that disclaimer in case it wasn’t true.
Usual disclaimer: I went to an advanced test in high school so my observations of my peers may and probably will be different from average because we were lacking the lower echelon of student performance and attitude, your results may very, etc
I will concede there’s an element of truth to this, kids will respect an easy teacher quite quickly, but kids aren’t blind to good teachers. There are plenty of teachers at my old High School that are strict as hell, but no one could deny the “hey, I finally understand!” Or “I never thought of it that way!” Factor. And of course (and I don’t think you believe this, but I’m putting it out there) cool isn’t mutually exclusive with good.
There were two AWESOME math teachers at our school, one rode a unicycle and juggled stuff when he was done with the lecture, the class was nodding off, or whatever. His tests were also damn hard, not because he didn’t cover the material well, but because the entire departments motto was they weren’t going to spoonfeed us. Most people did very well in his classes nonetheless because their respect and general feelings towards him made them want to take the effort to study and do well. (The other one let us play Smash Bros Melee in the closet in the room if we were done with our work and the lecture was over but class time was left, same deal). And in case you think it was only cool teachers, one of them, known to instill fear in the hearts of million, was highly respected as “getting the job done” by teaching calculus VERY efficiently and having most people understand it really well. He was by no means a cool guy but I’ll be damned if 99% of the school didn’t respect him and know he was a ridiculously good teacher nonetheless, in fact his class was pretty competitive to get into if you had any interest in a Calc related field post high school.
My Chem teacher, on the other hand, left to get Jack in the Box during a lab with non-dilute HCl, guess how many people compared to the math class were in the A and B range? Now guess how many people passed the much harder AP course with the cool teacher (who is also known as being quite mean… my AP Euro teacher jokingly referred to him as ahem a 10 thousand year old fire demon). If a teacher isn’t pulling their weight, or is overly critical without having the skills to compensate the kids just won’t listen. Now I’ll admit, people with an inherent distrust of authority do worse, so respect does help the process, but for most people the majority of the respect that allows learning to take place at a more fluid pace is only gained if the teacher is good enough to command it.
Oh, of course it’s not mutually exclusive; I didn’t mean to imply that. However, those teachers knew how to be strict when strictness was required. Presumably, there was always a line that you didn’t cross, or else you wouldn’t get to enjoy the fun free time activities. The worst thing that can happen, though, is when students effectively bully a teacher into not making them do work by being completely uncooperative, and it’s this kind of thing that makes it necessary to have a framework in which students can actually face consequences for defiance. And I think part of that is having a system where thought-out criticisms are accepted but angry rantings are punished, especially for student officers, which is also a practical life lesson—which accomplished more, “Hope, Change, and a new direction for America,” or “Bush lied; people died!”? Of course, that requires the faculty to actually listen as well as the students to cooperate.
I realize I’m getting off the subject a little, oh well.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And obviously, a truly incompetent teacher isn’t going to inspire respect, but part of life also entails having to deal with morons without flying off the handle.
Huh. In my day it was called Seven Minutes in Heaven.
Retired school teacher here.
What she does on her time and her equipment is her business (and her parents’ responsibility. If she is doing this at school, she is “off task.” Then it becomes the school’s business.
I don’t think that teachers are so much interested in the respect of their students as they are in having a classroom where learning can take place. When some students are actively disrespectful, that violates the rights of students who want to learn.
It really does take someone with a thick skin to teach.
Calling someone a “douche bag” is a metaphor. I wonder how courts look at unpleasant comparisons as slander.
Now if the teacher or administrator really wanted to act like a douche bag, she or he could go on the internet at home and call the girl “pond scum” or “the trailer tramp.” Of course that would be against all professional ethics and a most unkind and unfair thing to do. That’s why grownups refrain from exercising their First Amendment Rights every time they get a chance to.
Hey, we thought schools were like prison too. We couldn’t talk in the hallway between classes. In elementary school, we couldn’t talk during meals. We couldn’t leave study hall to go to the bathroom. If he really HAD to go, we had to make it up with 30 minutes after school.
Dingdingding ! We have a winnaaaaah ! 
I’m a teacher and I fully believe that if you treat students like children and criminals, you will get students who act like children and criminals.
We’ve been squeezing the rules ever tighter and tighter (like the “no groups” rule, or my old school’s awesome “Nothing can be written on your backpack” rule.) and as far as I can tell we’ve come nowhere near ending hooliganism in our schools. You can’t plan for every contingency. You can’t fence a student into submission.
We need to have high expectations of our students, and give them a way to live up to them. And this means we need to let them make choices so that they learn how to be responsible for their choices. Of course it’s harder. Some kids will make some bad choices. But in the end it teaches them how to be responsible to themselves, not responsible to a book of rules.
Anyway, it’s her time, her computer and her website. If she wants to run for student body president on the platform of “admin is all douchebags”, that is her business. Part of letting students vote is letting their vote count. Otherwise, whats the point?
But isn’t not being allowed to represent an organization a real consequence for publicly badmouthing it?
She’s not breaking an artificial rule. She’s failing to understand that you can’t both ask someone to endorse you while also slandering them.
Depends on the school. Some schools, the class officers represent the class to the administrations. In others, class officers represent the class as part of the administration–they are spokespeople, not agents. I have no idea which model this school falls under, but it would really impact my view on this: if the student officers have real influence or actually represent the students to the administration, then I suppose she has the right to run. But if they are spokespeople, well, then, her behavior was out of line.
The only thing problematic with the bill that I can see is the part where it gives the kids the right to be disrespectful using the school’s equipment.
What’s next? In order to be qualified to participate in extracurricular acitivities, you have to allow the PTA to inspect your bedroom, and they can blackball you if they don’t like the rock star posters on your wall?
News flash: not allowing students to express their opinions of their teachers will do precisely jack to make them respect their teachers.
Wait, are you actually arguing for child labor?
I’m currently in my 15th year of public school education (well, a few of those years were at a private school, but the education there wasn’t as good), and I can certainly say - and explain - freedom of assembly. I maintain that our country as a whole is better off when kids are in school, as opposed to on the streets, and are taught various things about the world. More school usually means less crime.
So what if they don’t like her saying in her blog that she supports gay marriage? Or opposes it? Or thinks that marijuana use should be legalized? Or that interracial marriage should be banned?