Whatever happened to free student speech?
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court upheld the right of a 13-year-old and her friends to protest peacefully against American involvement in Vietnam at their school.
The justices’ decision in the landmark free expression case Tinker v. Des Moines provided us with indelible imagery and a lasting statement about student free speech and symbolic expression.
In upholding the students’ decision to wear black armbands to school in 1965, the court reasoned, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Fifty years later, however, Tinker just isn’t what it used to be.
Years of Supreme Court decisions have left student expression rights at a crossroads.
Free speech in the public schools might just be the only area where First Amendment safeguards have narrowed, rather than expanded, in the past half century.
In Bethel v. Fraser in 1986, the court concluded a student’s speech, which was filled with sexual innuendos, could be limited. Justices explicitly stated their decision did not overturn Tinker, but reasoned administrators have a right to maintain educational environment.
This is a reasonable concern, but administrators have taken the rationale to extreme levels, halting expression rather than using it to teach students about civil discourse and the long-standing American value of protest and free speech.
Two years after Bethel, the court greatly narrowed student press rights in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, providing school administrators the power to censor information students sought to publish in school media if it did not align with educational objectives. Many administrators have used the ruling as an excuse to censor student publications at whim.
As more and more issues become political and divisive, student free expression will continue to be challenging. Earlier this month, for example, a school district in Wisconsin banned the Confederate flag from its campuses, citing need to protect the educational environment.
New technologies are also complicating what constitutes the schoolhouse gate, as students use social media to threaten, harass and shame classmates in ways that have repercussions on campuses. Last spring, a high schooler in Alabama was given in-school suspension for criticizing administrators for not allowing students to take part in a walkout regarding gun violence in schools. Does the school have the power to penalize student expression when it’s done on their own time on their personal devices?
Tinker remains a valid Supreme Court precedent — something justices can draw from in future rulings — and its imagery of the schoolhouse gate remains a compelling and commonly cited argument for student expression rights.
What Tinker lacks, and requires as it settles into middle age, is a renewed appreciation — from the courts, school administrators and parents — for what young people can contribute when they engage in matters of public concern and a recognition that safeguarding student speech is crucial to raising a generation that is not only aware of its rights, but knows how to exercise them.