Do an American’s rights under to U.S. constitution not apply if they are of school age? Or for that matter are our schools not part of the U.S. and governed by some other laws? Of course not, but some shool districts and administrators seem to think that their particular domain is in an alternate reality and not subject to the law of the land. Even more frightening is the apparent spreading of this type of thinking to entire communities.

Now before I get a lot of complaints, let me say that I feel that overall our school systems and staff are doing an admirable job (although I would like to see shop class make a comeback in more schools). There are a few bad apples however, and since the educational community likes to point out that they are shaping the leaders of tomorrow - why isn’t there a better system in place for weeding out such individuals from the educational community? Is the stress of rising to administrative level in school systems causing them to lose all sense of perspective or giving them some reason to believe they have God like power?

I recently watched a show about how a student was suspended from his high school sports team for trash talking an opponents team (nothing profane). Now, I’m not big on sports but trash talking is as much a part of it as hitting a ball and certainly not something that should incite a coach and administrators to such actions.  The real kicker is - he made these comments on the internet while seated at his home computer. Not at a game, not on school property, not even from a school computer.

After having his day in court, the judge agreed that the school violated his right to free speech and ordered that be allowed to return to the team.  But it didn’t end there - after the court ruling - the team’s coaches quit (in protest I assume). What maturity - quitting because a student proved beyond doubt in a court of law they were wrong.

There is more to the story including a second bout in court with the accusation that the school did not try to replace the coaches in order to not comply with the previous ruling. The team was disbanded and neither the student or his team mates got to finish the season. Everyone came out a loser, but the student came out a loser with a 60k award for damages.

Now what if this had been handled from the beginning with a bit of common sense? It may have gone like this:

Principal A - Did you see what (student) wrote on that message board about us?

Principal B - Yes, it is the talk of the town.

Principal A - What can we do about this?

Principal B - About a bit of trash talk between sports rivals? You’re joking right?

Principal A - Hmm, well I guess you are right about that - not like we didn’t do the same back in high school.

And it would have ended there, with everyone a winner and the student 60k poorer.