Libs of TikTok…you know, that account that progressives call racist and homophobic and transphobic even though it only re-posts damning evidence of woke lunacy from TikTok and other platforms?…posted an email exchange between Arbor Creek Elementary Principal Melissa Snell and an (unnamed) individual in which Snell indicated that “Freedom” T-shirts were banned in her school. “I just want to make sure that you have told your staff to not wear those ‘Freedom’ shirts to school anymore. Thank you.” Jonathan Turley confirmed that there is such a ban, though it may be temporary. Superintendent Brent Yeager confirmed the emails that Libs of TikTok had postedbut suggested that it was temporary as Snell “reviewed district practices.”
Turley says there is nothing to review.”I fail to see why Snell had to suspend the wearing of such shirts pending review. “This is clearly a content-based limitation on speech,” he writes.
In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Supreme Court upheld the right of students to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War, famously 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.”
This does not involve the type of “lewd,” “vulgar,” “indecent,” or “plainly offensive” speech discussed in cases such as Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986). It is a statement of solidarity between the freedom of speech, a statement made more poignant and urgent with the murder of Kirk for exercising that right.
It is also not a celebration of unlawful conduct, as in Morse v. Frederick (2007), as opposed to the exercise of our most “Indispensable Right.”
Much as I tend to agree with Turley and respect his Constitutional and ethics alarms, I’m not sure he’s right on this one.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Given the close association of the Freedom T-shirt with Charlie Kirk, and how his followers and admirers have made the shirt a badge of support for Kirk’s mission and views, is it not responsible under the Tinker standard for a public school to ban wearing of the shirt?
MAGA hats only say “Make America Great Again,” but schools banning them in virulent Blue communities (are there Blue communities any more that aren’t virulent?) have been upheld when it was considered reasonable to expect the caps to cause “disruption.” To the easily triggered and those whose knowledge of Kirk and the history of the shirts are limited to the media-spread lie that he promoted racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ views, the Kirk T-shirt, for that’s what it is now, might well be seen as hostile. Courts upheld school bans on “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts because the phrase was a euphemism for profanity and could be prohibited by schools under their authority to enforce rules against offensive or disruptive language. I think the same should apply to the Kirk shirts, which are being promoted as demonstrations of solidarity with Kirk’s values (or what people think they are).
Ethics Alarms 
I agree with Jonathan Turley here. Banning “Freedom” T-shirts is viewpoint based suppression of speech. And so is banning T-shirts that say “There are only two genders”. Tinker v. Des Moines should indeed be the ruling precedent here. This precedent allowed for the expression of leftwing political viewpoints at school instead of just standard patriotic fare. And what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The argument that wearing a “Freedom” T-shirt is disruptive amounts to a heckler’s veto. A school should be able to explain to students that they have to be tolerant to students with different political viewpoints and religious background. A school could also lead discussions about what freedom is, that people of various background may have different conceptions of freedom, and as this T-shirt is linked to Charlie Kirk as discuss the topic of political violence. In other words, this T-shirt worn in class could have been the start of a great civics lesson.
But instead the school bans T-shirts that message that a student is not aligned with leftist cant. The argument that said T-shirt would cause disruption is nothing but an excuse to censor unwelcome viewpoints. Because these same public schools would have no problem with gay pride flags and promoting transgenderism in class. They only censor one side of the political and cultural spectrum.
CVB
Thank you. So far the three responses are in keeping with my line of thinking. Coincidentally, I had some friends over this evening and we got into the reason flag burning is protected. Two in the group felt that burning the flag was incitement. I replied that one must have an intent to cause a violent reaction and to prove incitement the threat of violence must be imminent. I went on to say that we cannot use the hecklers veto to censor opinions we don’t like. I also stated that counter demonstrations occurring at the same time are far more likely to incite violence and can actually give visibility to the opposition’s point of view. Had those reacting to the unite the right rally in Charlottesville waited until the next day Heather Heyer might be alive today and there would not have been national news crews there to capture the carnage they hoped would occur.
Let the idiots have their say but make sure you get the last word in after the idiots have left and gone home.
And I’m unconvinced still. After some thought, I realized that “All Lives Matter” shirts are the perfect comp (as well as MAGA caps). I wondered if schools banned them, and the bans were upheld.
Yes and yes. And I think Tinker supports them and the “Freedom” T ban. It’s not the word, its the controversial political message.
Found a case that decided it was discrimination, then settled with removal of the BLM material
https://www.umlc.org/umlc-secures-major-victory-in-free-speech-case-against-lakeville-school-district/
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/lakeville-schools-black-lives-matter-posters-down-settlement/
Never thought I would say this, but Jack, with respect….Bite me, you are wrong.
Not on point. Obviously a school that allowed “Black Lives Matter” but not alternative statements would be engaging in viewpoint discrimination. They could ban both, or neither. There is no discrimination in banning the Charley Kirk shirt. And schools were allowed to ban “All Lives Matter” as an implied anti-Black Lives Matter attack. “The Shirt Worn by that racist, gay-hating Charlie Kirk” is inherently disruptive in some communities.
First I would like to know if Jack has proof that indicates that the school banning the “Freedom” T-shirts was evenhanded by also banning T-shirts and flags supporting BLM, LGBTQ+, and the intifada. Please count me skeptical given the current climate of leftwing indoctrination at public schools.
Second doesn’t the First Amendment protect (especially) controversial speech? Isn’t all speech about politics and cultural hot button issues controversial? Isn’t school precisely the place where students should learn to engage with each other about the controversial issues of today in a civil way? Should this not be part of civics education?
Third there is another legal precedent that may apply here, and that is Cohen v. California in 1968. Paul Cohen appeared at court wearing a jacket with the text “Fuck the Draft”. Cohen was arrested and convicted for maliciously and willfully disturbing the peace and quiet … by … offensive conduct”. The conviction was overruled by SCOTUS with Justice Harlan writing the majority opinion “while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric”. Harlan also noticed that the conviction of Cohen was solely based on the speech and not by any separately identifiable conduct.
My conclusion here is that a) a T-shirt with the text “Freedom” is speech b) a potential disturbance or disruption of the peace by others is not enough reason to suppress speech at any place, neither in the court room nor in the class room nor anywhere else as this amounts to a heckler’s veto c) a total ban on any political speech in the classroom is still a violation of the First Amendment.
First, there is no “but didn’t you do this then?” argument in such cases. The argument that a school can’t ban a message perceived as racist now because it didn’t ban BLM shirts at the outset of The Great Stupid won’t work. The school can say “that was then, and we may have been wrong. New policy, We won’t allow those shirts any more.” No court will find a new policy unconstitutional because a previous policy was.
Second. No, not in public schools, by students, when the reasonably are seen as distracting or disruptive. Read Tinker et al.
Third. A courtroom is not a public school. QED.
Jack,
I think your interpretation of Tinker v. Des Moines is incorrect, please confirm that you are not following the minority opinion of Justice Black.
Tinker v. Des Moines upheld the rights of the students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam war. As wearing a T-shirt with the text as anodyne as “Freedom” is not materially different than wearing armbands in protest of a war, the schools and the courts should follow the same line of reason, and recognize the rights of the students under the First Amendment to wear these T-shirts.
Hereby I am following what is written at the following website, and I have taken the liberty to quote it in full
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/21
Question
Does a prohibition against the wearing of armbands in public school, as a form of symbolic protest, violate the students’ freedom of speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment?
Conclusion
Yes. Justice Abe Fortas delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority. The Supreme Court held that the armbands represented pure speech that is entirely separate from the actions or conduct of those participating in it. The Court also held that the students did not lose their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech when they stepped onto school property. In order to justify the suppression of speech, the school officials must be able to prove that the conduct in question would “materially and substantially interfere” with the operation of the school. In this case, the school district’s actions evidently stemmed from a fear of possible disruption rather than any actual interference.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stewart wrote that children are not necessarily guaranteed the full extent of First Amendment rights. Justice Byron R. White wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he noted that the majority’s opinion relies on a distinction between communication through words and communication through action.
Justice Hugo L. Black wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the First Amendment does not provide the right to express any opinion at any time. Because the appearance of the armbands distracted students from their work, they detracted from the ability of the school officials to perform their duties, so the school district was well within its rights to discipline the students. In his separate dissent, Justice John M. Harlan argued that school officials should be afforded wide authority to maintain order unless their actions can be proven to stem from a motivation other than a legitimate school interest.
The armbands were not disruptive speech. I was around then, you know: nobody attacked those opposing the Vietnam war,and nobody attacked war supporters except the SDS and the Weathermen, and they weren’t in public schools.
I see all through Facebook and the media that Charley Kirk was a hatemonger who hated blacks and gays. If that’s what kids are taught in Madison, or Austin, or Boston, that’s what they believe, and the Shirt Charley Kirk Wore—please deal with it in that framework, not “a shirt that says freedom”, then it is clearly symbolic potential “fighting words,” and thus sufficiently disruptive to ban in a public school setting. It is political. At this time, when one end of the spectrum is advocating killing those who disagree with them, a school can’t be too careful.
The mere expression of a conservative sentiment cannot be regarded as “fighting words” under the First Amendment. If that is the case then we have to make the sad observation that free speech in the education system only apply to the left as the left is willing to use violence up to assassination, and the right is still beholden to law and order. In my opinion this state of affairs is a moral outrage, and needs to be actively defied by challenging the educational authorities in wearing this T-shirt.
Fighting words as those that are a “direct personal insult” and, by their very utterance, “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace”. While not protected by the First Amendment, later court rulings have significantly narrowed the scope of this doctrine, limiting it to face-to-face confrontations rather than offensive speech in general (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). So a T-shirt that says “Kill All Niggers” or “Fuck Islam” may qualify, but not a “Freedom” T-shirt. Anyway, the courts apply a strict scrutiny standard in rulings on the First Amendment exceptions as to what constitutes protected speech so the bar for banning speech is very high.
Tinker v. Des Moines (and other cases) also sharply distinguished between speech and conduct. Conduct can be disruptive. Pure speech is never disruptive, and thereby protected by the First Amendment. The fact that students nowadays react in a disruptive way to perfectly reasonable speech does not alter that; the cause of the disruption is the intolerance and lack of civility of those students. The schools should punish the disruptive students, not the speech.
“The mere expression of a conservative sentiment cannot be regarded as “fighting words” under the First Amendment.”
“I agree that blacks are inferior and trans people should die” is NOT just “a conservative sentiment.”
Strawman argument.
Wrong. That is exactly why the shirt was banned, and they didn’t make it up.
The shirts say “Freedom”. It does not say that transgenders need to die and that blacks are inferior. The left’s malicious misinterpretation on what conservatives stand for should not be used to ban speech that perfectly falls within the Overton window of accepted speech.
The shirts look like the Freedom shirts sold by Turning point USA. Interesting question if they looked different: written in script, or with the letters vertical rather than horizontal. Yes, all of these cases are slippery slopes. It’s line drawinag. And there is justification for drawing a line before the Freedom/Kirk Tribute shirts rather than after.
Because that is what people think a Charley Kirk shirt means, KKK, after all, is just initials….
It is a school’s task to correct wrongful thinking that equates mainstream constitutional sentiments with the KKK. Any school that fails to do that does not deserve to be called an institution of learning.
What’s “wrongful thinking”?
“What is truth?”, asked Pontius Pilate when trying Jesus. And what is the purpose of a school? Isn’t it the task of the school to teach children about the true, the good, and the beautiful? Isn’t it another task of schools to question received truths, and lead students on a path of discovery to what truth actually is? Is a free inquiry and free speech not a necessary to arrive at the truth? Why actually does a school teach civics, and history?
I am not advocating relativism as you seem to do in your response. But if you want to ban T-shirts under the assumption that Charlie Kirk’s viewpoints are morally equal to the KKK and Adolf Hitler, then I think the public school system in the USA become as morally corrupt as the public school system under Adolf Hitler. We might as well teach history from the books of David Irving.
I do not think that any sane parent should want to send their children to a school where their deeply held views are equated to the ideas of the KKK and Hitler. I am unwilling to pay taxes to support such schools.
As I think about this, you may led me to the perfect reason why we should not have a public school system in the United States. Make the parents sovereign over the education of their children.
Now, I KNOW I’ve been clearer than this comment suggests. I am not equating a Charley Kirk T with a KKK shirt, but I am saying that many, many, many people who are otherwise reasonable do, and you can’t say they are unreasonable if that what the news media and Democratic leaders have told them. Nor are such schools equating Kirk’s real positions with the KKK, or Nazis, or whatever else. Their concern is that the students might, and thinking a class mate is advocating racist beliefs is bound to be disruptive and distracting. Perception is reality. The only reason a child would have a duplicate of the shirt Kirk was wearing when he was killed would be to show support for him. If you believe he’s Satan, that’s a legitimate problem and a reason to ban the shirt. Whether that belief has any validity at all is irrelevant.
The way I read Abe Fortas’s majority opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines is that freedom of speech weighs higher than order in the classroom. That renders your argument about disruption in the classroom legally irrelevant. I believe we need a constitutional lawyer or guest blogger on Ethics Alarm. Jonathan Turley?
But subsequent cases have greatly weakened that. For example, it was held that schools can’t punish students for social media content that did not both relate to the school) or other students) unless it was issued and was circulated on the school grounds…because it was likely to disrupt communications. This is because the facts of Tinker are distinguishable from the facts of those cases, and this one. No student was likely to take the armbands as a personal attack. To someone who believes that Charley Kirk stood for anti-black racism, wearing an “I stand with Charley Kirk” shirt is an attack. I’ll agree that it’s a close question:that’s why I made it an ethics quiz.
And subsequent SCOTUS opinions moved toward Black and Harlan. When both the greatest conservative on the Court and the greatest liberal on the Court both think the majority is wrong, attention should be paid…and it has been.
Jack, are you now arguing that Tinker v. Des Moines on the issue of speech in schools is (partially) overruled by SCOTUS? Perhaps you can mention some SCOTUS cases. I wish that Professor Turley would comment on Ethics Alarms to provide some clarity on this issue. We need a real First Amendment lawyer here.
Anyway I believe that students should challenge the schools by wearing T-shirts with “Freedom” collectively, and daring schools to discipline them. This issue is worthy to be brought in front of SCOTUS to create the necessary clarity.
In my opinion it is a moral outrage that there is a de facto heckler’s veto on public schools on the expression of any conservative sentiment. The violence of the left should not dictate what can be said or worn at schools, or anywhere else for that matter.
If we substitute the r with a w so it reads fweedom would that be ok given that Kamala Harris made news with that when she claimed she attended civil rights marches as a child and said she wanted fweedom.
A single word cannot be controversial nor can it be an explicit political statement. Like incitement one must demonstrate an intent to disrupt and the likelihood of imminent disruption not just the potential for disruption. We do not know if any of the students would associate the t-shirt with Charlie Kirk or any other reason why it might cause disruption.
Schools routinely incorporate various political messages like changing Columbus day to Indigenous People day and organize lessons around it. Gay teachers and supporters wear or display pride paraphernalia. And, we know that substantial political bias exists in public education which works to indoctrinate young impressionable minds. As such, it stands to reason that educators will find any countervailing message disruptive to the indoctrination process and will seek to censor it.
I posit that schools need to allow competing messages and allow students to examine the merits of ideas if they are going to actually educate them. If a teacher or administrator cannot handle a simple difference of opinion between students without having to censor ideas they do not belong working in public education.
If the shirt was adjudged criticism of Charlie Kirk to mock his followers, it might be bannable. What keeps getting missed here is that we are talking about public schools, K-12, not colleges, not courts, not public places. Tinker and its progeny make it very clear that the First Amendment must yield to the purpose of educating the young. If the effect of the message is to cause tensions, conflict and disruption, then its not protected speech.
But if a school allows rainbow flags, it can’t ban “There are only two sexes.”
Jack, I see it thus:
Given the close association of the Freedom T-shirt with Charlie Kirk, …
I’m struggling to see how an association with Charlie Kirk could be disruptive. If something which is associated with both an American value and Kirk can be banned, can’t the schools ban Martin Luther King quotes on the basis that it might cause controversy? Even if I allowed that the word “Freedom” on a T-shirt was more likely than not to evoke Charlie Kirk first and foremost (which I frankly don’t), This is a slippery slope of epic proportions. For example, why couldn’t the school ban things like a depiction of George Washington on a T-shirt because he was a slaveholder?
In Tinker, Justice Fortas wrote:
The District Court concluded that the action of the school authorities was reasonable because it was based upon their fear of a disturbance from the wearing of the armbands. But, in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression. Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949); and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom—this kind of openness—that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputations, society. [my emphasis]
It seems to me that paragraph describes exactly what is going on here. The school fears some kind of disturbance, so it is banning the speech that MIGHT be proximate to it. Keep in mind that any such disturbance would not happen because of the speech, but rather because of the bad behavior of the students instituting it.
The stylized word “Freedom” could be worn in remembrance of Kirk, or just because it expresses the feelings of the individual wearing it apart from Kirk. “Freedom” is a fundamental tenet of our constitutional republic, and Kirk’s association the word cannot be used as a justification to ban that expression consistent with the First Amendment. It is like banning the word “Donald” because it has a close association with Donald Trump.
To me, this looks like yet another slippery slope of censorship due to fear of a small minority being “offended” and disrupting the school. The correct response would be to punish the disruptors and allow the speech.
The line has to be drawn somewhere. This looks like a good spot to do it.
I agree with Jonathan Turley. As I understand it the whole point of freedom of speech is to protect speech that someone will likely find offensive. Inoffensive speech offends no one, causes no controversies, and hence is in no special need of protection.
I have no objection to schools banning the word fuck from clothing worn on school grounds, but that’s for a different reason.
Also, a potential (?) correction to Turley’s comment (at least based on the BETHEL SCHOOL DISTRICT v. FRASER text the link provides–maybe the phrase occurs elsewhere in the ruling?): “plainly offensive” is inadequate — what is in the text provided is “offensively lewd” — I’m thinking dick pics?
Outside of a school setting, the heckler’s veto is recognized as a violation of the first amendment. It was even recently expanded to schools for conduct outside of a school in Bethel School District v. Fraser in 2021.
Inside the school there is more leeway for control of disruptive speech. But that does not mean the heckler’s veto does not apply when a reasonable position is considered disruptive.
MAGA is a mere statement of “I like our democratically elected president.” One side has now gone so far off the deep end that it is now unacceptable to like someone who received the plurality of votes by a wide margin and an electoral landslide. We have a representative democracy, and Trump won. We’re being held hostage by out of control people who lost politically and won’t peacefully take their place in the minority. They have the right to conter protest, no more.
As for the shirts? So what if they support Charlie Kirk? It is also unacceptable to say you morn for a man who was murdered for his words. He was a supporter of more dialogue, not less. He was an ardent free speech activist. Claims of his “hatred” have been demonstrated to be based on twisted clips. As you know, I’m quite libertarian. I agree little with Charlie Kirk. But he demonstrated far more open and honest dialogue than his detractors. If you think someone should be stopped from the message “I likeed and now morn Charlie Kirk” you are a problem. You are a danger to democracy because you seelbto stifle speech. I refuse to let you have that power.
But it is a school setting, and education is the prime objective, not free speech. Banning all political statements or advocacy is permitted and appropriate. Whether Kirk’s values should be taught in school is 100% irrelevant.If a “Freedom” shirt communicates “I hate Blacks” thanks to Blue propaganda and spin, that’s what it means. The word itself isn’t the issue.
Then I think we run the risk of letting “Blue propaganda and spin” become the arbiters of not only what words are permitted, but what certain words mean in a context beyond their original definitions. That’s the whole “preferred pronoun” thing.
Students won’t be allowed to write a report about Charlie Kirk as an historical figure because the Left wails “too divisive!” when his name is mentioned. A ninth-grader’s speech about “freedom” will be shouted down because some fools in the class assume it must be alluding to Kirk.
That feels a lot like “not very free speech.”
This has to stop at some point, and the Left has to grow a pair that are big enough to – no, not climb in the lion’s den – talk about things that might discomfort them a bit.
It’s a heckler’s veto poorly hidden under the guise of “education”. It is deemed disruptive by “one man” or a small, distinctly one sided homogenous board. And it’s undeniable which way education tilts.
Wearing a shirt with the pride flag promotes degenerate deviant sexual promiscuity, pedophilic grooming, and child mutilation for the sexual pleasure of it’s adherents, it should be banned everywhere for the extreme disruption it causes in society. That’s the kind of sentiment you’re giving the freedom shirt.
The reality is neither shirt or both shirts contain a controversial political message, or are inherently “disruptive” in some communities.
Discomfort is not disruption, unless we’re talking about the sophistry of the left.
Absent actual violence being fomented by the messaging on the shirt… oh, wait, it was members of the alphabet mafia that assassinated Kirk, my bad. Other than th… Oops, forgot about the Memphis shooter. But aside from th… oh, crap, forgot about the Minnesota shooter. I guess the good news is they’re not trying to kill members of our governm… dang, forgot, the attempted murderer of Kavanaugh just got a reduced sentence for being trans.
Meanwhile, every story of racist and gay hating conservative “disruption” turns out to be a hoax, from Juicy Smollet to Bubba Wallace and a few more.
Not sure I concur with the”bite me” from Mr. Harrison, but I’m leaning towards it in this instance – I think you’re a little quick to give up on Freedom, there.
Tinker (and its progeny) say what they say, and the law supports banning a disruptive T-shirt. The “heckler’s veto” does not apply in public school. Turley uncharacteristically cheated in his post by not even considering the “disruptive and distracting” factor, which is what is at issue.
Jack,
No one has yet articulated how such a shirt could be disruptive except to say it is associated with Charlie Kirk. Well so is the American Flag and many like to see it burned but flags remain conspicuous on school grounds and all have one in front of the school.
Maybe the school would be happy if the t-shirt said Say No To Freedom which would be similar to Nancy Reagan’s Say Not To Drugs Campaign. I don’t recall that message being disruptive in schools because they embraced that political message.
There are overt messages that should be avoided in school settings because it is likely that a fight would break out over that message. This is not one of them. Freedom is a universal construct which is what draws people to the United States. Any association to Kirk is no different than flag.
Just reading the summary, if you’re hanging your hat on “reasonably forecast” disruption, define that.
If the disruption comes from the leftist assholes violently attacking people as I referenced above, then it ABSOLUTELY is the heckler’s veto, just court sanctioned.
If the official can reasonably forecast disruption, they can reasonably forecast steps to curtail that instead of speech.
The stakeholders here are kids. The shirt is probably not even their speech: how many sixth graders know beans about Charlie Kirk?But kids can understand what racism is. What’s the upside of permitting a Charlie Kirk shirt, an Adam Schiff shirt, or a Donald Trump shirt? Again, it is responsible to ban divisive speech, including speech perceived as hostile to individual students, their faith, race, gender or sexual orientation. Distraction is disruptive to the educational environment. No prediction necessary.
Calling bullshit on that one. They understand enough to know that there’s something inequitable even if they can’t articulate it as well as we can.
If the Charlie Kirk stuff probably isn’t even their speech, how probable is it that the BLM and alphabet mafia paraphernalia is?
Parents show up at school board meetings expressing the disruption their kids felt about having leftist cant shoved in their kids faces and the school boards don’t do a damn thing about it – except having the microphones shut off for reading in a public forum the things they have in the school library because it’s insane. But they don’t ever seem to ban the alphabet mafia shirts, under whose banner that crap flies.
And it’s funny you mention faith as one of the elements kids shouldn’t have to face hostility for, especially with regard to the paragraph above. If the two genders kid wore a shirt that said “in the beginning God created them male and female” would you defend that? Or is that disruptive?
I’ll agree with your position that there be no shirts allowed as opposed to picking winners and losers, which is all you’re doing here, and seemingly for the same reason the school boards do it – it’s easy in the current environment.
I’d like to see you articulate a defense of the Kirk shirts even if you don’t agree with it, just to see how you’d argue it.
If the Charlie Kirk stuff probably isn’t even their speech, how probable is it that the BLM and alphabet mafia paraphernalia is?
Not probable at all, which is why those shirts should not be protected in schools either. Parents are using their kids as billboards, and distracting from what the kids are supposed to be paying attention to in class.
We have a very long history of political expression being allowed at school. The Vietnam protests established this. By banning what should be benign displays because it offends those that want to employ the heckler’s veto, it isn’t content neutral. It will result in only one side getting shut down, and we cannot accept that.
We’re long overdue on a civics lesson that our schools have not been teaching. No one has a right to be free of offense. That’s what these leftist totalitarian professors and their ignorant students have achieved at universities these days, an effective heckler’s veto. That needs to stop, and there is no place better than our public schools.
If a teacher can’t teach because of an American flag, freedom shirt, MAGA hat or pro Charlie Kirk T-shirt, that’s a problem with the teacher. They can learn some tolerance and do their job, quit or get fired. If that’s all the staff, so be it. If they can be swayed, then maybe they have redemption as a teacher. If they refuse, that is not someone who should be educating our children.
Similarly, if a student can’t just ignore a silent display of what should be non-offensive, that again is a them problem. It doesn’t matter if it is 3/4 of the class, so be it. They can learn about what civics really means in detention, for as long as needed.
The definitive question regarding the shirt is: Is Charley Kirk a divisive figure? If he is (and he is) then the shirt is divisive. Classrooms don’t need divisiveness.
Could I get a retelling of the duty to confront? You say divisive, I say he was just about the most inclusive figure on the right or the left. He went out and talked to people, he made a point of having those that disagreed with him cometo the front of the line.
As far as a classroom needs education, being offended by a tshirt and acting out is the problem, not the tshirt. This time it feels like you are arguing what is legal, not what is ethical.
There was a time when Martin Luther King was a divisive person. Many consider all Democrats divisive. People preaching toxic masculinity are divisive but we don’t silence them.
Who the hell decides who is a divisive person? Why debate anything because doing so creates a divide between two ideas. The argument that Kirk is divisive is in the mind of those who disagree with his ideas and his heavy emphasis on Christian belief. There is an equal or greater number of people who believe he showing the way to greater social harmony through discussion and challenging the dogma of demographic politics.
Simply disagreeing with ideas and proffering a competing opinion cannot be an instant disqualifier as being divisive otherwise there will be no reason to debate anything.
You cannot say he is divisive and then allow schools to use PBS programs or any of the documentaries produced by any of the networks or Ken Burns if you want to stay consistent. Where did public school kids get the idea that America is an inherently racist country that stole the lands from indigenous people. Mom and dad did not create that narrative. Why is colonization seen as a evil thing? Where was that taught.
Schools in Northern Virginia are fighting tooth and nail to resist any effort by parents to prevent boys in girls locker rooms and sexually explicit books in elementary schools so the idea that Kirk is divisive and everything they do is not is a farce. They are choosing what can be said and what cannot under the false premise that things they don’t want expressed are divisive. That is the current mantra of the progressive wing of the Democrat party which is authoritarian in practice. Resistance to authoritarianism is what Kirk represented
If teachers were capable of using a Pro-Kirk shirt as a teaching opportunity without bias, that would be a different situation; 99% of them can’t, so the shirt is divisive without contributing anything, And you know what? Children are NOT free. A child absolutely has no idea what that shirt means. The current culture wars can’t be taught in schools fairly of competently, and it is not the childrens’ job to fight them. Children didn’t kill Til.
Again, the shirt is political, and intentionally so (by the kids parents.) So would be a shirt promoting Jesus, Marx, Lenin, Lennon, King or Kimmel, Bush or Bad Bunny. All distractions from the non-political essentials teachers are there to teach, and public school exists so they can.
I’ve seen all of Burns’ documentaries, and would have no problem with any of them being shown in schools, up to his recent Trump derangement rant at the end of his documentary about the Jews in WWII. The Civil War is better than most textbooks on the topic. Baseball. Prohibtion, The Roosevelts, Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson. All stimulating, factual and not disruptive.
I think in this particular context, and as one who still is in public education, banning a shirt or hat that has become a symbol of something that is likely to cause disruptions, the school system can say no.
However much I agree with Charlie and the first amendment, I equally prefer NOT to have to deal with ideological issues at school. I, as an educator, do not have first amendment rights to speak my mind or politics within the scope of my job, so limiting the ability for these situations to occur makes my life much easier.
Another thing that makes life easier where I teach is that we require students to wear uniforms, which greatly reduces the problems associated with what kids choose to wear (or not wear) to school.
Who decides what is likely to cause disruptions. Would the school cancel finals if the students were likely to be disruptive? Or, are only the things that the school objects to likely to cause disruptions. Many things schools do are inherently likely to cause disruptions like pop quizzes so it is not so much the disruption when the students exercise some very limited right of expression it is the expression itself. If you believe that some group will be disruptive you must know who they are so why are you not intervening ahead of time and explaining why their freedom to communicate their ideas is predicated on the ability of others to have the same right.
I would be interested in how your school teaches kids about civics when political views cannot be expressed. I would find it impossible to give a lecture on the formation of the United States without expressing some political perspective as to why we have the Bill of Rights and Natural Law. When I was in high school in the early 70’s my favorite class was called Modern Problems. Here we had lively discussion of many controversial issues of the day, which there were many. One does not need to express an overt preference for a candidate to acknowledge certain facts upon which we should all agree such as the rule of law and the notion that we all have the right to express an opinion without the heavy hand of government creating rules that quash those ideas.
Making the life of an educator easier is not the goal of education. Giving children the foundations for identifying and evaluating relevant information, and the tools to analyze that information so that they can develop an understanding of the subject matter so that they may be able to articulate a position or new synthesized idea is what educators are supposed to do. Classroom management does not require the teacher to require absolute regimentation.
Maybe we might just need to reinvent education so that professional classroom “educators” are no longer necessary and we simply provide tools for parents and children to explore the world of learning independently and then simply let them test for subject matter mastery. That would solve the problem of disruptions in the classroom. Socialization could be accomplished by spending dollars we spend on classroom instruction on socialization activities. We are moving closer to that than educators wish with on-line degree programs.
Intolerant student cause disruptions and distractions. The blame for the disruption should not be laid at the wearer of the T-shirts with statements like “Freedom” or “All Lives Matter”.
I liked Glenn Logan’s comment about Tinker v. Des Moines as in that case the majority opinion of Fortas states that the fear of disturbance is a risk that needs to be taken:
The District Court concluded that the action of the school authorities was reasonable because it was based upon their fear of a disturbance from the wearing of the armbands. But, in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression. Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949); and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom—this kind of openness—that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputations, society.
I make the choice here to thrust Jonathan Turley’s legal interpretation more than Jack Marshall’s interpretation of the First Amendment.
As this is an ethics blog and not a legal blog, I have to say that censoring a T-shirt because it is associated with Charlie Kirk is a moral outrage similar to censoring a T-shirt with a picture of Martin Luther King.
Censorship is never evenhanded. It always goes in one political direction. There is no neutrality in public education. As the public education system is captured by the hard left we all know in which direction the censorship goes. The only solution is to have zero censorship at public schools, or to abandon public schools.
“Intolerant student cause disruptions and distractions.” If Charles M. Blow tells his kid that the shirt is a dog whistle to racists who hate the kid, the student isn’t being “intolerant” by accosting a student wearing the shirt.
If that student disrupts the classroom peace by accosting a student wearing a T-shirt associated with Charlie Kirk, then according to Abe Fortas’s majority opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines that is a risk the Constitution requires us take in order to allow expression in the class room. The freedom of expression is a higher value than peace in the classroom, and the fear of disturbance cannot be used as an argument to suppress speech.
Charles Blow does not get to decide on anybody’s right to wear a T-shirt, and his opinions on racism are just his private opinions. Education should teach us that parents and other authority figures may be be wrong on certain issues.
He gets to tell his kid what he should recognize as racism. and the school can’t deal with it by saying, “How Dare you?”
Is a T-shirt featuring photo of Hitler bannable? Yes? How about a picture of David Dukes? Yes? George Wallace? If so, then a T-shirt with Charley Kirk on it is bannable, and the Freedom shirt is the equivalent.
Actually schools say “How dare you” to kids all the time when they don’t buy the inclusivity dogma. School boards in VA have their backs when they do so.
That kind of logic was what caused Emmitt Till to get murdered. These people were taught that blacks were unable to control their sexual appetites and would rape women.
If Charles Blow teaches his kids that whitey will hunt him down and kill him if given the chance does that absolve the child who assaults a white person? No. Charles Blow and those like him cannot decide for others what to think or say because he teaches his children to be bigots.
I would be 100% for school-mandated uniforms. It removes the distractions and disruptions that our host highlighted in his post and – maybe most importantly – prevents teachers/faculty/administrators from taking sides and projecting biases into their decisions.
Oops, missed this while I was commenting below, Joel. Midwestern common sense.
You wrote it with better flavor and color…I used standard beige.
Yeah, I believe anecdotal evidence is actually the best evidence.
Irish storyteller. Got it from my mother and aunts sitting around after Sunday dinner telling stories about growing up on the South Side of Chicago.
But your lucid, concise exposition is admirable.
It only solves part of the problem, namely speech via attire. Would a student still be allowed to say in a classroom discussion to state that there are only two genders? Or would that be treated as bigotry causing disruption?
Yes, separate issue. I’d say if the kids were all wearing silent uniforms, that would enhance their ability to speak freely and discuss issues intelligently and vigorously rather than trading dueling T shirt messages.
Next up a “Slavery is Freedom” shirt.
And what about banning hand signals like ASL. The letter F comes to mind as possibly problematic.
So what you are saying is that the solution to left wing indoctrination in schools is for right leaning students to become as disruptive as possible any time they are presented with any speech that is even remotely leftist in nature? Got it. Parents, get out there and teach your kids to become hysterical maniacs! Give them cart blanc to throw tantrums, toss themselves on the floor screaming bloody murder whenever they spot a leftist! Have them stage walkouts. Destroy the left wing propaganda. Rip those posters off the wall. Get in the lefties faces and be violent!
If you can’t disagree with them quietly, then only loudly, hysterically and obnoxiously will do. Apparently.
A problem with sarcasm: I honestly don’t know what position you are advocating here.
Ceding the schools to the anarcho-communist agitators because they become disruptive when people are allowed to have their own beliefs is bad. That is my position.
Also, all sides can play the stochastic terrorism game, but I think a better approach is to allow people to express their positions quietly rather than encouraging stochastic terrorism to spread. Letting the legacy media decide who gets to say what words and why only encourages right-wing new media sources to play their own stochastic terrorism games. It works, right!
12-year old anarcho-communist agitators?
It wasn’t 12-year-olds who banned t-shirts with the word freedom on it. It was adults who claim to fear disruption. Who would be doing the disrupting and why?
Having gone to parochial grade school and Catholic boys’ high school, and having worn white, short-sleeved uniform shirts with nothing more than “SMA” for St. Michael the Archangel embroidered in blue on the breast pocket (which five pockets my mother would remove and attach to next year’s bigger shirts) and grey trousers and black lace dress shoes in grades one through eight, and then button-down shirts and ties and dress pants and dress shoes in high school, I’m actually in favor of kids wearing uniforms to school. Uniforms eliminate all sorts of distractions and competition and, in the long run, save the parents money. Uniforms also create a sense of belonging to a student body and being involved in a common enterprise: learning and growing up. I have no problem with banning the Charlie Kirk shirts and all the other disruptive attire. Schools are for learning.
And you know what, come to think of it, I suspect some of us wore campaign buttons in the fourth grade for either Kennedy or Nixion, which were no more than an inch in diameter. Of course, having a presidential campaign going on in the real world was, to use Obama’s awful term, a teaching moment. We even held a vote in class. When we were in seventh grade, Kennedy was killed.
I checked: public schools have been allowed by the courts to mandate uniforms on the grounds that clothing can be disruptive. (This is why Elizabeth Hassler, the prettiest girl in my high school classes, kept getting sent home for wearing too-revealing skirts. (Good night, sweet Liz, wherever you are.)
And praise Allah her parents didn’t take the school to court.
A friend is a graduate of the girls’ Catholic high school in Phoenix which has always required uniforms: a modest, white, button front short sleeved blouse, pleated, plaid skirt of a modest length, and white sox and saddle shoes. The friend explained that as soon as school was out and they were off campus, which included the boys’ school next door, they would untuck their blouses and roll up the waists of their skirts so their hemlines were acceptably higher.
What if I make this into a shirt?
“Brandon, our lives matter, so let’s all go make America and freedom great again.”
I think it covers all the classics:
“Let’s Go Brandon”
“Make America Great Again”
“All Lives Matter”
“Freedom”
Also: “Fight!Fight!Fight!” “Fake News!” …maybe even “I did not have sex with that woman.”
“Monica Lewinsky.”
[You left out the most hilarious part, the ridiculous lawyerly addendum, which he added to make sure no one would think he didn’t have sex with countless other women.]
There was a similar issue that made the news in Idaho about an elementary teacher who was forced by the school to remove a banner from her classroom. The banner had a bunch of hands of different (human) skin colors holding each other, along with words akin to “all colors are welcome here.”
The teacher decided to fight the issue, saying her banner wasn’t political.
I agree with the school: the teacher, inadvertantly or not, was displaying a pretty overtly political message in her classroom. You don’t get to decide what symbols mean to others, and the fact that an objectively harmless, likely true phrase (black lives matter, all lives matter, blue lives matter, make America great again, science is real, trans people are people, etc ad nauseum) has become a political lightning rod can often dictate whether that statement belongs in an elementary school.
Personally, I think the deciding factor here is not whether the school can limit the speech, but whether the rational man would associate a “freedom” shirt with a political statement.
Perhaps I haven’t been clear: the shirt in question is a duplicate of the shirt Kirk was shot and died in. Doesn’t that make the shirt a political statement?
In my opinion, apply the rational person test (maybe I’m forgetting the term from my few law classes). That way, you minimize the heckler veto aspect (like if Charles Blow’s kid decides that a white shirt with the US flag is promoting white nationalism or something extreme) while still acknowledging that certain symbols do not belong in classrooms. If the average person sees a disruptive symbol, it’s probably disruptive and doesn’t belong in school.
This has been an outstanding conversation – top to bottom. Maybe the discussion will continue, but thank you all for your contributions to this point.
It’s remarkable how much this aging man can still learn!