Case Review
Prior to West Virginia v. Barnette and Tinker v.Des Moines the schools had a clear understanding of their authority. Schools functioned in loco parentis, in the place of the parent. In this capacity they were able to wield authority through almost any means necessary to maintain order. The two aforementioned decisions changed the face of our public schools forever. For the first time the parents were acting not with schools, but against them. This schism eliminated the legitimacy of much of the public schools' authority over students.
Barnette was the first ruling that allows students to resist the authority of the public school. In stating that citizens, and what is more important, students, are free to resist the authority of the state and schools, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for the societal chasm that we are currently facing. However, the flood gates did not burst open. Twenty-six years passed before the Tinker ruling that forever changed the landscape of our public education system.
Tinker firmly instituted the idea of students' rights. It clearly affirmed students' claim to Constitutional rights. This event occurred during the apex of the rights revolution and many students and parents rallied around these newly affirmed rights and clamored to claim even more liberty. Tinker was not the Supreme Court's last strike against school authority.
The Pico case in 1982 struck the final blow against school authority. The duty to indoctrinate the founding principles of our democracy is infirmed by the Supreme Court's ruling that a school district cannot remove books considered offensive by the community. The public schools lost the permission and obligation to represent the ideals of the community. The idea of schools representing America's values was as old as America's system of public education.
Soon the Court and society came to understand that they had gone to far in giving rights to students. Bethel v. Fraser marks a second turning point in America's debate over students' rights. The Fraser case was the first case to buck the trend of expanding students' rights. In ruling that a school can restrict speech on the basis of "the countervailing interest in teaching the students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior." This ruling was a step towards the re-institutionalization of the inculcation of societal values by public schools.
In Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier the Supreme Court made another ruling against student's rights. "School officials were entitled to regulate the contents of the newspaper in any reasonable manner." This broad statement was a reassertion of the public schools' authority over activities of the school. The Department of Education report, "A Nation At Risk" confirmed the suspicion of many Americans. America's public schools were in need of reform. The ruling came directly from the dissatisfaction with our public schools.
Government 375: Educational Reform and Ideology