Knuckle under buckle boy
I often question America’s education system, even though I have spent plenty of time in it.
So much energy gets directed toward things that have nothing to do with “education” and to action that affronts learning.
The latest example comes from a lawsuit making its way through the Tennessee courts, a suit against the Anderson County School Board and several county education officials. It serves as another testament to the way school administrators can find evil lurking behind every kid’s locker or in this case, every kid’s belt buckle.
The Associated Press reports that a teen in Tennessee argued in federal court that school officials violated his constitutional rights when they suspended him more than 40 times for wearing a belt buckle bearing the Confederate flag.
“I am fighting for my heritage and my rights as a Southerner and an American,” Tommy De Foe, 18, told reporters during a break in his trial.
Let’s set aside the flag issue. Clearly it upsets some people, especially some blacks. I do not deny that. It reflects in the eyes of some racism and support of ideals that taint the American way. Granted.
But the more important issue — and the one at the heart of De Foe’s suit — is the continued willingness of schools to clamp down on student expression under the guise that their freedom disrupts the learning process or the “educational environment.”
This backward mentality persists despite the longstanding belief among the enlightened that no place deserves to be more “free” than a school.
De Foe’s lawyers contend the school system can put upon their client only if his fashion statement causes “substantial disruption” to the learning environment. The AP reported that officials in Anderson County said they feared racial tension and violence would result from the belt buckle, which it would seem in this era of “teendom” would get little if any notice.
Some on the jury agreed with the lawyers. De Foe’s suit ended in a mistrial Aug. 15, when a jury in federal court failed to reach a verdict.
Indeed, all sides in the suit agreed that the belt buckle failed to draw much notice at Anderson High School or its accompanying vocational school. At the main high school only one of 1,160 students is black. At the vocational school all 200 students are white. Issues of race have arisen at the school in the past and in nearby schools.
A more likely concern for administrators is that De Foe challenged the system. And in high schools throughout the country, that means trouble with a capital “T” for those administrators.
In 1970, several of my high school friends made a weekend trip to downtown Chicago and returned with bell-bottom dress pants, which they all wore to school on the following Monday.
And they all wore them home that same day when the principal suspended them.
Bellbottoms: sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, don’t you know.
It seems that in four decades, we in education might have moved ahead by creating environments where the controversial doesn’t always translate to potential chaos but rather to an opportunity for one of those “teaching moments” I hear about now and then.
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