You Can Be Charged as an Adult, But Don't Dare Act Like One
Carson Valley Middle School just suspended a dozen of its students because of marijuana -- not because they were smoking it, mind you, but because they were advocating the legalization of it.According to the Associated Press, earlier this month students at the Nevada school hung more than two dozen signs calling for the legalization of pot and for authorities to “free” three of their classmates who had apparently been taken into custody for “suspicion of smoking marijuana," which heretofore I did not know was a crime.
A valuable example of free speech in action -- a teachable moment, perhaps? Not to school principal Robert Been. "What they did is not a cool thing to do. It just stirs up the campus," he told the Associated Press. "It's not conducive to our education environment. This is a school for crying out loud."
Yeah, listen up, Young America: it's just not "cool" to think freely and then, my god, follow that up by actually expressing yourself (the horror). School isn't about thinking and expressing, silly, it's about indoctrinating and repressing. It rhymes so you know it's true.
But some old stodgy types like the ACLU of Nevada still believe schools should primarily be places of learning, not de facto incarceration, where freedom of thought and expression are encouraged, not punished. An attorney for the civil liberties group told the AP he suspects the students were suspended not for any actual disruption they may have caused by hanging a few posters -- that's what brought down the Soviet Union, don't ya know -- but for the view they were expressing. Not only is pot illegal, but so is talk of legalizing it.
Rather than use the incident as an example of life in a vibrant democracy, school administrators are bent on stamping out any would-be copycats who mistakenly believe -- perhaps because they can be charged as one -- they have the same rights as adults. Indeed, school officials are adamant that the young Americans whose attendance is mandatory have no such rights within the confines of their facility.
"The whole First Amendment issue has certain restrictions when coming through the front door," declared Superintendent Lisa Noonan, the rights of her students stamped upon with a dismissive oh-that-free-speech-thing. "This is what I call a disruption of the learning environment. We want an orderly environment."
"It's a huge disruption to the school environment and counter to what we are trying to do," Principal Been chimed in, raising the question: just what are they trying to do?
With such a focus on structure and an "orderly environment," it seems some school officials have lost touch with what it is they're supposed to be doing: teaching, preparing their students to be independent thinkers, not just cogs in the corporate machine. Instead of acting as educators, they're acting as wardens.
Photo Credit: Carolyn Tiry
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