Although the national media have not yet discovered it, the hottest issue on the radio talk and call-in programs at the grassroots of America is the battle between those who believe that the public schools have the right to do whatever they want with our children and our money, and those who believe that students and their parents have rights which the public schools may not infringe.
The better side of the argument is that students do NOT leave their constitutional rights at the schoolroom door when they enter the public school classroom. Since the child is a captive audience and schoolpersons are authority figures, the school’s authority must be limited by the students’ rights, their parents’ rights, and the constant supervision of citizens and taxpayers.
Under U.S. law and Supreme Court decisions, parents are the primary educators of their children. Here is a recommended Student’s Bill of Rights.
1. The right to be taught to read the English language in the first grade. If by mid-year of the first grade the child is unable to read materials available in his home, he has been denied this right and should be transferred immediately to intensive instruction in phonics (the proven best method of teaching reading).
2. The right to privacy. Schoolpersons may not force a student to discuss or answer questions, write assignments, or keep journals about his religion, moral values, family, attitudes and feelings, sex behavior, politics, or what he and his family do at home.
3. The right to his religious faith and beliefs. Schoolpersons may not force students to do assignments or engage in classroom activities which criticize or downgrade his religion. Examples of offensive practices currently in use are: teaching that any religion or non-religion is as good as another or that God did not create the world; teaching witchcraft, the occult or astrology; conducting Eastern mysticism, yoga, Transcendental Meditation, guided fantasy, or “stress courses” using hypnotic practices.
4. The right to share information with the student’s parents. Students should have the right to take home any textbooks, materials, and assignments, and to give their parents access to computer software and sound and video tapes of classroom activities.
5. The right to have and to hold his moral values and standards, political opinions, and cultural attitudes. Schoolpersons may not impose on the student the value system that ethics are situational or that moral dilemmas have no right or wrong answers; may not ask them to make personal decisions whether to lie, cheat, steal, take drugs, drink alcohol, engage in premarital sex, or kill (as promoted in the “lifeboat game” or in discussions of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide).
6. The right to alternate assignments when parents believe that schoolpersons are violating the student’s rights or imposing on a student lessons, films or materials inappropriate for the grade level. Since thousands of good books and materials are easily available, when parents object to a course, book or assignment, schoolpersons have the duty to give alternate schoolwork for full credit and without discrimination.
7. The right to have the student’s family treated with respect. Schoolpersons may not — through lesson, film or innuendo — convey the notions that parents are old-fashioned, untrustworthy, uninterested, have obsolete values and attitudes, or might abuse their children.
8. The right to be inspired and encouraged by classroom lessons, NOT depressed or disturbed. Students have the right to be taught the greatness of America and our Constitution, and that ours is a land of freedom and opportunity for those who learn, work hard, and persevere. Schoolpersons may not depress children with lessons or films about death, dying, violence, surgery, suicide, or dire predictions about the end of the world.
9. The right to the sanctity of the student’s body and to safety on the school premises. Schoolpersons may not touch the child in the private parts of his body. Schoolpersons have the obligation to provide for the student’s security against physical attack and abuse, vandalism or theft of his property, peddlers of illegal drugs, and the use of profanity or blasphemy by schoolpersons or students.
10. The right to full compliance with federal and state laws. Schoolpersons have the obligation to notify parents and students about applicable laws and procedures pertaining to parental consent for certain courses or materials.
Public support for public schools depends on respecting these rights of students and their parents.
