Expression vs. Disruption.

• Position: National - Brief Article

John Tinker, 15, had had enough. In December 1965, he and other teens in Des Moines, Iowa, decided to take a stand against the war in Vietnam, a war many Americans then supported. Their protest was simple: They wore black armbands to school. The move rankled administrators, who suspended Tinker and others when they refused to take off the armbands.

The ensuing legal battle, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1969, the Court ruled in Tinker's favor, writing: "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

The decision backed students' First Amendment rights, so long as their actions were not disruptive. The Court said the armbands were "a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance" by Tinker and the other teens.

So how is it that, more than three decades later, students are still being suspended for expressing their political views on T-shirts and lockers? Much of the answer lies in who decides what is "disruptive": the principal.

"Principals are a lot like judges in a small way," says Bill J. Bond, a principal in Paducah, Ky. "We have policies and then have to interpret what the policies mean."

The need to maintain order often takes priority over the desire for an open exchange of ideas. And school principals, unlike judges, usually don't have weeks or months to contemplate the appropriate balance. A principal seeing a kid wearing a controversial T-shirt may have just seconds to decide how to handle it--knowing that the next tough call may be just around the hallway corner. Under those conditions, Bond says, it is easy to make a mistake, to go too far.

Principals' decisions, right and wrong, have added to what some regard as significant restrictions on students. "They do still retain some core free-speech rights in a school environment," says Gary Daniels, a spokesman for the National Coalition Against Censorship. "But they substantially don't have the same protections as you would out on a street corner." --E.N.

FOCUS: Finding the Fine Line Between Free-Speech Rights and Disruptive Behavior

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand how schools try to balance students' right to free expression against the need to maintain an atmosphere that is conducive to...