Bill of Rights Cancelled at Public Schools

Statist State laws in every single jurisdiction within the United States compel young American citizens to attend public or equivalent schools during as many as 13 of their most formative years and require them as well to surrender their most precious Constitutional rights in the process.

The government thinks that it owns people; it treats them that way, particularly young people; and can therefore dictate to them all aspects of their thoughts, speech, and behavior even when they are not physically present in the classroom.

Examples of this government trampling upon the Bill of Rights with respect to school-aged minors are happening every day all across the nation.

Kaitlin Nootbaar, the 2012 valedictorian at Prague High School in Oklahoma was denied her diploma for innocuously using the word "hell" instead of "heck" during her commencement speech. The statist school officials forced her to issue a formal written apology in return for her right to graduate with the rest of her class.

The government believes that straight-‘A’ high-school valedictorian graduating students enjoy no First Amendment rights.

Just this week, Erin Cox, a 17-year-old Massachusetts honor student attending North Andover High School was demoted as captain of her school’s volleyball team and suspended for five games for engaging in a perfectly legal activity on her own time having nothing whatsoever to do with school.

Her “crime” was acting as a designated driver for a friend who contacted her at home asking for help driving home from a party because she was too intoxicated to drive herself. So Cox went to the party site to pick up her friend just as police showed up and started arresting and handing out summonses to several suspected underage drinkers, including Cox, who had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol at any time.

Even though she was cleared by the police of any violation the school punished Cox anyway on the dubious grounds that she has violated its zero tolerance alcohol and drug use policies. “The school is really trying to take a very serious and principled stand regarding alcohol,” explained Geoffrey Bok, an attorney who represents the school.

Someone should explain to this pseudo attorney that high-school students are supposed to enjoy Fifth Amendment Constitutional rights just like everyone else in America, and that government public school officials have no legal right to punish them without due process of law for lawful activities they engage in on their own time while not at school.

School district officials in suburban Los Angeles have hired a private firm to monitor and report to them on the Internet social media activities of students, activities they engage in while on their own time away from school.

Glendale, California, is paying $40,500 to the firm to monitor and report on 14,000 middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year.

The statist compulsorily education goons are poking their noses into the public postings on social media by middle and high school students – stalking, snooping and spying on them -- ostensibly for the purpose of searching for possible violence, drug use, bullying, truancy and suicidal threats, any “inappropriate behavior” which they will use as a basis for intervention and punishment.

The private spy agency sends a daily report to school authorities upon which students' comments could be causes for concern, explained an official. They monitor whether students are talking about drug use, cutting class or violence or using their Smartphone during class time.

But it is not the function of government operated compulsory education systems to involve themselves with the lives of students while they are not at school. That is true even if there might be a good faith possibility of preventing bad behavior. In a free society, that’s the job of parents, friends and extended family.

"This is the government essentially hiring a contractor to stalk the social media of the kids," explains an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends privacy, free speech and consumer rights. "When the government -- and public schools are part of the government -- engages in any kind of line-crossing and to actually go and gather information about people away from school, that crosses a line," he explains.

Yes, the American government in the 21^st century believes it can cross the line because it thinks that its sheep enjoy no privacy rights. We know for a fact from NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden, that the government is not limiting its spying activities on children. Big brother is spying on all of us all the time.

And now we know that the Bill of Rights has been cancelled at public schools.