Sunday, April 02, 2006
Flag waiving, political speech, and the censorship of violence
“My son just wanted to show his classmates that he had pride for his country. Why is this a symbol that incites violence but the Mexican flag is not? “Schroeder asked. “My brother is in the Navy. We’ve been wearing patriotic shirts for years. Ranchero’s colors are even red and white. Where are we going to draw the line with what they can and cannot wear?"
I'm for speech, and particularly political speech, in large quantities, in schools. Let us examine the many ways in which these school officials are teaching precisely the wrong lesson.
First, just as I am a strong believer that it must remain lawful to burn a flag, even an American flag, in the service of political speech, there must also be an unimpeachable right to wave a flag for that purpose. School officials especially must defend that right, not trample on it. An educator who shows contempt for our most basic values is not worthy of the name, and if he uses his position of power to circumscribe the lawful First Amendment rights of students, he should be stripped of that power. What are these schools teaching our children about democracy?
Second, an educator is not excused from the requirement to defend political speech -- or at least should not be -- simply because others might be offended by the speech in question, or even respond violently to it. It is the job of government officials -- and, regrettably, most educational administrators in this country are government officials -- to defend speakers from the violence against them. If the school is not up to it, then it must call in the police. Either way, speakers must be defended from the mob, and thugs who propose to censor speech through threats or actual violence need to be disciplined.
There is obviously a great temptation to pass rules to limit provocative speech, especially when there is a risk that a mob will form and turn violent. It is at precisely those moments that people in responsibility need to act courageously. This is not always easy for educators, who are not used to contemplating physical threats. Almost exactly 35 years ago, my father confronted this problem at the University of Iowa, which then proposed the adoption of rules to guide faculty and staff when there was civil unrest on campus. The draft Statement on Professional Ethics asserted that a “professor’s first priority should be to do all in his power to prevent death and injuries due to violence” during periods of high tension on campus. My father objected strenuously to that formulation, writing then:
[w]hen conditions on campus are abnormal, the threat usually involves a demand for scapegoats, as some tried to make ROTC a scapegoat for last year’s Cambodian intervention. It is at these crucial moments that the first obligation of faculty members must be to act rationally and to stand firmly behind any member of the community whose rights are threatened. Standing firm is a difficult matter, since capitulation often appears to be the only way of averting violence. Nevertheless, every time we sacrifice somebody else’s rights in the hope of avoiding bloodshed we are guilty of unethical and unprofessional conduct and make our own rights less secure and less respected.
One would think that point would be so obvious that it did not need to be stated, but there it is. When rights are involved, avoiding violence can never be the highest priority. Otherwise, the exercise of our rights would always be subject to veto by the first people who threatened violence.
Now, however, high school students all over the country are learning that their rights are worthless if some group prone to violence alleges that it has been insulted. It is no less than nauseating to contemplate.
Finally, it is difficult to see how a school can ban the wearing of a shirt with an American flag -- or a Mexican one, for that matter -- without violating the holding of Tinker v. Des Moines School District, in which the Supreme Court said that schools could not ban the wearing of armbands evoking objection to the war in Vietnam. True, that case noted that the wearing of the armbands at issue was not disruptive, but presumably the Court did not mean to say that armbands could not be worn if others acted disruptively, which seems to be the basis on which the wearing or waving of flags has been banned. In any case, Justice Fortas was quite clear that public school students are persons too:
In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school as well as out of school are "persons" under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.
We should be thrilled that our students -- whether American or immigrant -- are arguing about the propriety of legislation before the Congress. It is a perfect opportunity to explain to students, if necessary by dint of police power, that the mechanism for doing that in this country is speech, which speech may be demonstrative but not violent. School administrators who blow that opportunity and violate the United States Constitution along the way are contemptible.
17 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Apr 02, 09:54:00 PM:
Good post, but note it is "wave" the flag, not "waive".
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Apr 02, 10:01:00 PM:
That and at least some of the other typos corrected! Thank you much.
By Dr. Goodheart, at
Sun Apr 02, 10:24:00 PM:
Was it a typo or a pun??
Since waving the flag is waived...
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Apr 02, 10:34:00 PM:
I thought about claiming it as a pun, but then I would have attracted readers who like puns.
By DRJ, at
Sun Apr 02, 10:44:00 PM:
You're right, Tigerhawk. If educators and others in positions of authority don't stand for the right principles, how can we expect others to do so?
Further, if one's actions and policies are focused on avoiding conflict, that is also a choice. I don't intend this to be inflammatory but it reminds me of the Niemoller poem - "In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, ..." To avoid conflict at all costs has consequences, and those consequences may be worse than the conflict one is trying to avoid.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Apr 02, 10:44:00 PM:
Can't fix "waiving" in the title without breaking the permalink, unfortunately.
By , at
Sun Apr 02, 11:40:00 PM:
Super post, and well done by your Dad as well.
What lesson have the educators taught here? That if you want to censor speech, threaten violence. That lesson is becoming a bit too familiar.
By Harrison, at
Mon Apr 03, 12:07:00 AM:
"School administrators who blow that opportunity and violate the United States Constitution along the way are contemptible."
Yeah, well school administrators have been blowin' that opportunity for over twenty years by censoring any Christian speech (other religions accepted). At this point they probably figure they're "entitled" to do exactly what they did.
By Darren, at
Mon Apr 03, 01:41:00 AM:
As a teacher I'm definitely linking to this--*and* sending it to my school administrators.
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Mon Apr 03, 03:36:00 AM:
I agree. I futher submit that this crap always happens at schools because the rights of those under 18 are easiest to abridge.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Apr 03, 07:07:00 AM:
Yes, goddessoftheclassroom, I agree that your first job is to educate, as you say. But c'mon -- lots of things go on in schools that have nothing to do with education. High schools all over the country have no problem providing security for interscholastic football games (for which there is virtually no sustainable pedagogical argument, I might add). Surely they can do so in order to defend constitutional rights.
By Ralph Thayer, at
Mon Apr 03, 08:24:00 AM:
How about the idea that conduct in school (what? about 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week?) be constrained to a model of behavior acceptable in the workplace? Isn't that part of an education preparing youngsters for the real world? How many of us could walk off the job or out of the office, scale our employers' fences, and join in a street festival and expect to have a job when we came back the next day? How many of us could run about the office waving flags in people's faces -- or getting in peoples' faces -- with impunity? Why should pupils in school have it any different?
Let teachers teach about "redress of grievances" during the school(/work) day and then let the kids demonstrate, if they must, on the town green on their own time. Then the choice will be between protesting and hanging out with your buddies, instead of between the former and attending(/working) at lessons.
And what is education if not learning how to make choices, even sacrifices?
By , at
Mon Apr 03, 09:27:00 AM:
Talk about bringing your own personal agendas!
First, protesting, peacefully, is protected political speech, whether it's from a child or an adult.
Second, freedom of expression is NOT freedom from consequences of that expression. Namely, that little johnny gets a ZERO for his work that day, because he's out protesting. That's an important point that even many adults haven't figured out (Dixie Chicks, Hollywood, Jerry Falwell).
Teach my kids that they have rights, but that they may have to pay a price to exercise that right!
What those administrators have done, banning the American and Mexican flags is unconstitutional. Political speech CAN be inflammatory. It CANNOT incite. There is a difference.
By Cardinalpark, at
Mon Apr 03, 10:02:00 AM:
I do miss the Pledge of Allegiance so...
By Admin, at
Mon Apr 03, 04:58:00 PM:
having just taken a public school law class, it was great to see your post referenced with the tinker case. certainly, students do not leave their constitutinal rights "at the school house door."
i would also agree that the administrators over-reacted; however, i would also argue that this is not going to stand up to the court case that follows and will end up being a good lesson for everyone involved.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Apr 03, 11:37:00 PM:
Wow. Waving a 'provocative' flag (like the Confederate flag) could be banned? Why? Because it offends someone?
Color me Danish.
By , at
Tue Apr 22, 02:55:00 PM:
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