Posted by
Fco on Sunday, October 08, 2006 7:28:44 PM
Although Maryland Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School student Amber Mangum was allowed to read other books on her lunch break, the school’s Vice-Principal Jeanetta Rainey ordered her not to read the Bible. The school official threatened Amber with punishment, if she did not stop reading it.
On Amber’s behalf, a civil-rights’ lawsuit was filed against the school, last week, in US District Court in Greenbelt, MD. Amber’s mother, Maryann Mangum, said: "Amber's a new Christian, and she's trying to learn all she can. She reads her Bible and she goes to Sunday school. It really upset me when she was not allowed to read it on her own time." After receiving no response to a letter sent to the school, the lawsuit was filed.
Source How silly is this vice-principal?
Is this a first ammendment issue? I don't know. Children don't have full freedom of speech rights on school grounds. Schools officials need the authority to control unruly behavior or what might lead to it. Children don't have a right to swear, to insult their teachers (though the ACLU may beg to differ). A child could not read pornographic material on their lunch break. We do need to give the teachers a degree of trust in what to allow and what to prohibit.
But it's all tied to discipline. The above case was an exercise of poor judgement however. There was no disruption, no need to cut this girl off from her reading than for any other book. I put much of the blame on the ACLU, that's created this atmosphere of paranoia for principals everywhere. School officials are under siege, and they are left with little choice but to make nonsensical decisions like this in fear of that ACLU lawsuit hanging like a sword of Damocles.
I'm not a fan of lawsuits. I wish the girl's parents would have made more of an effort to settle the issue on a more local level before going to the courts. But ultimately these kind of impositions are unacceptable. And if lawsuits are the only language schools understand, so be it.