Freedom In Constitution
Have you ever wondered what life at school
would be like without"freedom?" In myopinion I think it would be horrid. Think
about it. If we
had no freedom we wouldn’t be able to do the things we love
most, or choose
what friends we hang out with. The freedoms we have now we
all take for granted.
For example, do you even know what your freedoms
are? If you don’t, then you
ought to hear me out so you know in the future
what they mean. First of all
there are two very specific freedoms that all
students and teachers should know
and understand. These two freedoms are the
very basis for our society. 1)FREEDOM
OF SPEECH Freedom of speech is one
of the most important freedoms we have
because if we didn’t have this one we
wouldn’t be able to speak our minds
through speeches in public. This freedom
allows us to speak in more ways than
one. It allows us to express ourselves
through reading, writing, and speaking.
Although freedom of speech has
its greatness in many ways, it also has a
downfall, in which it is abused.
For example: Media today can twist this freedom
to invade your privacy, which
is not a good thing if you’re Arnold
Shwartzenegger getting out of the
shower, and someone takes a picture of you
naked and prints it in the local
paper. But most of the time this sinerio
doesn’t occur because they’ve come
up with laws like the "Privacy Act,"
and so on so this sort of mayhem doesn’t
happen, but even though laws are made
people still break them. 2)FREEDOM OF
RELIGION This freedom goes along with
freedom of speech yet stands alone in
its own category. There are many ways to
look at this freedom. It has as many
goods as it does bads. You just have to
learn how to apply it to you. First
I’ll list the goods. The gains of this
freedom allow you not only to speak
your own opinions, but allows you to take it
a step further. Example: Lets
say you are a Christian, but go to a school where
Christianity is looked
down upon. Now lets say you have some friends that also
attend this school
and want to have a lunchtime bible study, but are afraid that
the school may
suspend you or even worse. Well, it says in the constitution, the
rules and
regulations our country is based upon, that students may have a bible
study
in and on school premises as long as it is student led. Teachers may
even
attend, but cannot participate in the function. This is where a lot can
go wrong
and things get turned upside down. This is also where some of the
bads come into
play. This freedom is more a rightstricken than abused law. In
other words
it’s more denied than abused. An example of this was written by
Rebecca Jones
from the American Schoolboard Journal. She wrote, "Lillian
Gobits Vs
Minersville District, in 1940 led some West Virginians to
punish Jehovah’s
Witnesses who refuse to have their children recite the
Pledge of Allegiance in
school. The Witnesses, she wrote, "Were actually
herded together and fed
castor oil, stripped of their clothes, and forced to
walk through town."
(Jones 2) Well, about three years later the supreme court
reversed itself and
ruled that schools could not require the pledge. It’s
this kind of abuse that
turns people away from religion in my opinion.
Nothing is more challenging than
confronting a well-established myth. A myth,
repeated often enough that it takes
a hold on peoples imaginations and is all
but impossible to get rid of. One such
myth is that when it comes to religion
in public schools, people For and Against
school prayer are engaged in the
legal equivalent of Hand-to-hand combat, one
side fighting to put God in
schools, and the other desperately trying to keep
him out. Unfortunately,
parents, schools officials, and politicians alike
sometimes act as if the
myth were fact. Some people ag-on this myth with
well-intentioned, but simply
wrong statements about what the constitution does
and does not permit. House
speaker Newt Gingrich, for example, announced a while
back that under current
law students could not pray in the schools cafeteria.
Also, teachers
believing this outlandish myth have sometimes refused to accept
homework with
religious content. Some schools mistakenly support some segments
of the
religious community when they permit (unconstitutional)
state-sponsored
prayer, such as allowing coaches to pray with their teams, as
long as they
excuse students who do not want to pray. Or, another example is
where a school
excludes all religious activity period. As much in this media
age, perception
overcasts reality. Matters on which there is no dissagreement
in the courts and,
equally important in the thinking of church and civil
groups, have too often
escalated into open conflict because parents, the
public, and school officials
simply don’t know what the law provides. Schools
have been distracted from
their educational mission and forced to endure
unnecessary debates over
religious issues. Our society as a whole is depicted
as being boiled in an
endless culture war over public education. As our
courts have reaffirmed,
nothing in the 1st amendment converts our public
schools into religious-free
zones, or require that all religious expression
to be left behind at the
schools' house door. "Religious freedom is perhaps
the most precious of all
American liberties--called by many our First
freedom." (clinton 20-22) "The
Constitution protects expression by
students of their religious beliefs through
reports, homework, and art work."
(Stern 6-8) If you really think about it, we
really have it easy, because all
we actually do is take them for granted until
someone tries to either take
them away or abuses them, then we get mad about it.
A long time ago
teachers and students were limited by a strict theme of rules
and guidelines,
but today we have a new challenge. One to carry on generation
after
generation. Our freedom to speak out against wrong doing and our freedom
to
live a normal happy life. In my opinion "If you don’t have freedom what
do
you have."