Weakened Public Education and Student "Rights"
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (06/15/07)
The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center ("Center"), upon information and belief a reliable entity, funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has compiled alarming statistics about one facet of the failure of secondary public education. It utilizes 2003 - 2004 data from the United States Department of Education ("DOE"). There likely is no reason to question the reliability of the data or of the research approach. However, were there such reason the conclusions reflect such educational failure that they greatly could be exaggerated and the result would continue to reflect disaster.
Some 1,200,000 American high-school seniors (many of them already well behind in grade progression) will not graduate on time this year. Nationally only about 69.9% of those who should graduate will do so. South Carolina is the anchor State, with only about 53.8% graduating. The Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., a paragon of local governmental incompetence, not unexpectedly also is low, about 58.2%. Utah ranks highest, at 83.8%, although that figure seems impressive only by comparison.
The weakened effectiveness of our public education across the country, while varying with locality and sometimes within a locality, has become obvious to those who observe students’ and younger graduates’ knowledge and lack of knowledge. An observation in point: The other day I was talking with an erudite seminary dean (first in his class at the United States Naval Academy, Ph.D. in physics from Oxford University, two degrees in theology). In response to my empirical observation and my question, he said that, as a generalization, and particularly in the liberal arts, one often could equate an A.A. degree to what once was a high-school diploma, a B.A. degree to an A.A. degree, an M.A. degree to a B.A. degree.
Undoubtedly one of the contributing factors to ineffective public education is the extent to which students are accorded “rights.” The exercise of many of those rights, in turn, reduces discipline, diverts attention (including instructors’ and students’ time) and/or runs up costs of public education to taxpayers.
A couple of generic examples illustrates the point. These are only two of numerous categories which could be cited.
Dress code. Political, social and other messages - whether or not controversial, although they usually are - worn on, or as part of, clothing hardly contribute to the seriousness of education. Worse, they often create diversion, occasionally incite disturbance or worse. From the politics of black armbands during the Vietnam War to wild, racy, pornographic and/or just plain silly statements they do not facilitate serious study. Undue casualness undoubtedly is less disruptive, unless the “undue” includes too much undress, but it does contribute to an atmosphere of sloppiness. Part of the solution to dress code is simple, and has been successful where implemented: uniforms.
Speech. There is no evidence that Members of the First Congress when they proposed the First Amendment remotely had in mind tolerance of student speech unrelated to education in a school milieu or that State legislators had that in mind when they ratified the First Amendment. Perhaps not surprisingly, disciplinary actions relating to speech mostly have been limited to speech in the classroom. Without detailing specifics it would be more difficult to opine generally as to speech beyond the limitation that a student in a classroom setting should not speak unless recognized by the instructor and that no speech anywhere on or within sight of a campus should be inflammatory, insulting, degrading or the like. Unauthorized demonstrations and depictions do not contribute to the educational curriculum.
The foregoing said, one must look to the courts with some measure of dismay and to the attorneys for dissident students or their accommodating parents with more than dismay. No wonder that educational achievement is shaky, juvenile and post-juvenile delinquency and crime, gang and otherwise, on the rise.
Scholars diverge a bit as to cause-and-effect arising from litigation. Probably the initial highly significant source of judicially condoned trouble is a 1969 United States Supreme Court decision allowing students, against school rules, to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school. The judicial pattern since then varies, depending mostly upon specific facts and context. The current high-visibility case, Morse v Frederick, arising from punishment by a high-school principal of a student who displayed across the street from the school a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner, awaits a Supreme Court decision, likely this month.
It is estimated that almost 100 disciplinary cases annually are reaching (almost entirely State) appellate courts. The diversion of time, attention and money from education to litigation is appalling. Worse than that, inevitably these noneducational and anti-educational diversions are weakening American education, at the very time Chinese, Indian and other foreign education dramatically is on the rise. We should not be surprised at the extent to which American jobs flow offshore, many because wages are cheaper, but, self-evidently, no small quantity because so many foreigners are better educated.
The problem primarily is that of State and local public school districts. This writer long has questioned the worth of DOE. That doubt aside, at least DOE could have researched as did the Center, a private organization, and released the results, as the Center also did. Further, DOE could be publicizing the educational diminution and monetary and other cost caused by undue tolerance, even promotion, of students’ rights.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation, and has lectured at a number of law-school and other programs.
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