Thinking Schools = Learning Nation?
This is probably the hardest thing I have to say to many people I know, so I shall keep it short.
I've decided that students should not have the primary right to free speech or freedom of movement. Yes, they are human rights, almost universally so – go ahead and look it up in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, that document is flawed in that while it assigns rights to 'everyone', it also distinguishes between parents and children (see article 26). It also hedges all this freedom with caveats regarding what can be said (compare article 12 with articles 18 and 19). Articles 27, 28, 29, and 30 all create further hidden clauses which raise legal issues even if we were to claim that we respected the entire Declaration.
This is not new. It has all been said before. What's new is who talks about related issues, when, and why. On 25 June 2007, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered this very interesting majority concurring opinion concerning free speech in schools. In it, he explains why he thinks that students having the right to free speech in schools in unconstitutional despite the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
I agree with him.
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There, now I've decimated my blog readership. Oh well. I will continue if anyone wants me to, but perhaps I have said enough.
I've decided that students should not have the primary right to free speech or freedom of movement. Yes, they are human rights, almost universally so – go ahead and look it up in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, that document is flawed in that while it assigns rights to 'everyone', it also distinguishes between parents and children (see article 26). It also hedges all this freedom with caveats regarding what can be said (compare article 12 with articles 18 and 19). Articles 27, 28, 29, and 30 all create further hidden clauses which raise legal issues even if we were to claim that we respected the entire Declaration.
This is not new. It has all been said before. What's new is who talks about related issues, when, and why. On 25 June 2007, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered this very interesting majority concurring opinion concerning free speech in schools. In it, he explains why he thinks that students having the right to free speech in schools in unconstitutional despite the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
I agree with him.
=====
There, now I've decimated my blog readership. Oh well. I will continue if anyone wants me to, but perhaps I have said enough.
Labels: Education, Freedom, Human Rights, Justice, Law
etched with acid at 5:16:00 pm
10 Comments:
well, i have always thought that being part of a society would require the loss of certains freedoms.
its just a social contract
or something.
im not very eloquent anyways.
Hmmm... yeah but sounding a bit Thomas Hobbes like.
yea just read bits of his book.
people need to be sensible not vocal for the sake of it
I think even teachers do not have the primary right to free speech or freedom of movement. Come to think of it, very few people should be allowed to say whatever they wish to.
I think that adults have the primary right to free speech and freedom of movement, but they are also subject to the full legal penalties for these things, even under the UN UDHR. Sub-adults aren't subject to the penalties, why should they have the rights?
I don't think this is news to people in the know about US Constitutional Law. Which happens to be one of the things that irks me about Singaporeans citing free speech as a universal human right - do they even know the jurisprudence behind it in the first place?
Heck, the question of whether they have a right to free speech in schools could depend on whether the school is publicly or privately funded, and which state that school is in.
A social contract is invalid if the contract forbids the contractees the ability to withdraw from the contract.
Hence, speech, immediate property rights, the right to life, etc. are all seen as fundamental because they all have massive bearing on this ability (you cannot legitimately consent to a contract if you cannot discuss it, etc.)
On another note, what if someone wore a T-Shirt to school saying, "I love coffee?" Doesn't that encourage drug use too? Since no one has ever died from a direct result of cannabis use (no one has ever died from drinking coffee either) what's the real difference between promoting coffee and promoting weed? Isn't a coffee-encouraging T-Shirt using just as much "active speech" as a weed-encouraging one? The Catholic Church used to condemn coffee as the drink of infidels.
sounds like a contract law textbook.
"intention to be legally bound".. yadda yadda.
anyway my friend wore a shirt advocating marijuana to school on "youth day".
i wonder if you saw that, auto.
Of social contracts:
John Locke: Consent to avoid a state of war, man consents to build a community with laws. Masses have the power to reject any contract
Thomas Hobbes: State of War is avoided but man gives up part of his old rights when having a social contract. One central strong rule
Rousseau: looking at a lawgiver which is higher, impartial.
Liberty to most is a universal truth. Not to the post-modernists. post-structuralists.
Just a few strands of thought to consider.
galoisien: the best definition of universal human rights would be biological in origin, universal, human and right (as opposed to good or correct, orthogonally); caffeine is by definition a drug, but so are many other things by the standard definition - don't be disingenuous.
kentay: my house is full of coasters with curious leaf-like silhouettes... *grin*
jiesheng: nice strands; now weave them into a discourse!
anthony: yes, that's why I said that all this wasn't new...
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