Student Rights Quotes
Shanker was particularly honest and candid. Of the record, many politicians say the same think about their representing the interests of schoolchildren when the children are given the right to vote. Despite Shanker’s interest in representing his teachers, his policies and the UFT’s practices put much emphasis on student achievement as this is a goal of almost all teachers. The conflict with teachers are almost always with the politicians and school administrators who have their vested interests to protect and for whom the teachers make good scapegoats.
Tinker referred to the Supreme Court Case of Tinker v. Des Moines where the court ruled that school children had Constitutional rights as well as adults. It was not possible to have a blocking system that would keep “improper” or “indecent” internet sites from library or school computers. Even if it could, the appropriate material for a 17 year old to see and a 5 year old were very different. The blocking software never worked well. Computer sophisticated students would pride themselves by showing how they could evade the blocking software, and at the same time teen age girls would have health sites blocked because they showed how to do breast self-examinations.
Hypertrophy means: exaggerated or unnecessary growth or complexity
In some universities would sometimes protest the selection of a commencement speaker and demonstrate. On some of these occasions the school administration withdrew the invitation. In addition to the problem described by Beckel, the university sells out its basic intellectual commitment to hear all ideas and points of view—regardless of how repugnant or evil. Commencement speakers tend to create a bigger problem because of the custom of the university granting the speaker an Honorary Degree. Whereas it is against the academic tradition to censor a speaker and having a speaker does NOT associate the University, the faculty or the students with the views of the speaker. But the granting of the Honorary Degree does imply an institutional approval and admiration of the speaker, and that is fair game for student protest. However in the beginning of the 21st century some extreme left wing students succeeded in intimidating spineless university administrators and trustees into censoring speech and the ideas of the speaker. This was typical behavior of the right wing brownshirts of the 1930s when it was the Fascists who were prohibiting certain speakers—usually left wingers. 80 years later it was the left wing extremists engaging in this undemocratic behavior.
