-By Warner Todd Huston
Our schools are faster becoming the laughing stock of the industrialized world every day. This time three boys were barred from graduation, expelled and harassed by the foolhardy overreaction of school administrators over some flags they had on their trucks in the parking lot. No, it wasn’t the Mexican flag, it wasn’t the Iranian flag or even the Venezuelan flag. It was the Confederate flag.
Even more ridiculously, the kids weren’t using the flags in response to any racial situation, nor were they parading the flags around the school. These flags were merely hanging on their autos on the last day of school. The media couldn’t find a single student that thought the three boys meant anything by the flags other than with the intention to decorate their vehicles with them.
“They weren’t trying to hurt anybody, they just had it on their cars. It’s just freedom of speech” said Landin Lind, one of 75 students who chanted ‘Let Them Walk’ at the school Wednesday morning.
Sadly, this young student really thought that the PC stupidity of “zero tolerance” policies is something with which sentient and honest people can debate.
Naturally, school administrators went overboard with their reaction as well as their faulty assessment of history.
“We believe and have communicated with students that the Confederate flag represents hatred, bigotry, intolerance, slavery, civil rights issues and discrimination,” Kaufman said.
But, let me here take one step back. Yes, these idiotic school “zero tolerance” policies are stupid and need to be cast by the way side. But in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, one thing of importance was said about this incident.
“If, in the opinion of the administration, your speech carries the possibility of a material disruption of the educational process, they can censor it,” said state ACLU Executive Director Chuck Samuelson. “I wish students had more rights, but they have no rights.”
OK, yes the Administration’s policy was stupid in this case. But we shouldn’t go overboard and argue for untrammeled free speech in lower education. Kids don’t have the capacity nor the responsibility to understand what consequences for free speech entail. We actually don’t want to have our kids imagining that they have unregulated free speech in school. Such a free for all situation would make discipline impossible.
So, what is the solution? Fire the idiot administrators who make these stupid rules, get rid of these damnably foolish “zero tolerance” policies, and bring back administrators that are adult enough to be responsible for their OWN jobs to make logical, grown-up decisions based on each individual situation as necessary. This will teach children what responsibility really is.
Lastly, I’d like to point out something. I headlined this post with a purposefully misleading headlined about the Mexican flag. I did that to illustrate that the ONLY flag these school administrators attack is the Confederate flag. They have no other flag that causes them such heartburn. Who can doubt that if these kids were flying any other flag, no one would have said a word to them. Only a flag from American history is banned.
Imagine that.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston