Speaking Up: The Unintended Costs of Free Speech in Public Schools [Hardcover]

Anne Proffitt Dupre (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674031148 | ISBN-13: 978-0674031142 | Publication Date: January 8, 2009 | Edition: 1

Just how much freedom of speech should high school students have? Does giving children and adolescents a far-reaching right of expression, without joining it to responsibility, ultimately result in an asylum that is run by its inmates?

Since the late 1960s, the United States Supreme Court has struggled to clarify the contours of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech rights for students. But as this thought-provoking book contends, these court opinions have pitted students—and their litigious parents—against schools while undermining the schools’ necessary disciplinary authority.

In a clear and lively style, sprinkled with wry humor, Anne Proffitt Dupre examines the way courts have wrestled with student expression in school. These fascinating cases deal with political protest, speech codes, student newspapers, book banning in school libraries, and the long-standing struggle over school prayer. Dupre also devotes an entire chapter to teacher speech rights. In the final chapter on the 2007 “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, she asks what many people probably wondered: when the Supreme Court gave teenagers the right to wear black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War, just how far does this right go? Did the Court also give students who just wanted to provoke their principal the right to post signs advocating drug use?

Each chapter is full of insight into famous decisions and the inner workings of the courts. Speaking Up offers eye-opening history for students, teachers, lawyers, and parents seeking to understand how the law attempts to balance order and freedom in schools.

(20090121)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Law professor Dupre explores the delicate balance between the protection of free speech for young American students and the order needed in any school setting. She chronicles the cases that have tested that tension, and the underlying issues of the right of individual students to express opinions and other students to learn in an orderly environment. Dupre focuses on the Tinker decision of 1969, a turbulent period, when a group of students in Des Moines wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, with Justice Abe Fortas declaring that students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. Tinker set the stage for an increase in legal challenges to school rules on a variety of issues, from bans on books and school plays, and the distribution of underground newspapers, to discipline measures taken after student protests. Dupre puts the free-speech-in-school debate in context, pointing up the difference between free speech granted to a kindergartner versus a college student, as students more and more often challenge the elders on free-speech issues. --Vanessa Bush

Review

How the Supreme Court treats speech cases can be a mirror into that Court's soul, especially when the cases are about student speech. In this fascinating book, Anne Dupre reveals the deep inconsistencies and drunkard's reel of the jurisprudence in these cases, from the iconic Tinker through the recent Bong Hits 4 Jesus, and the difficulties that educators now face in regulating even threatening student speech. I have taught these cases many times, and like the kaleidoscope, they shift each time. But I will never look at them quite the same way after reading the story she tells of conflicting principles and no-win situations for teachers.
--Michael A. Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law, University of Houston, and author, The Law And Higher Education: Cases And Materials on Colleges in Court Third Edition (20081201)

Dupre examines the history of the debate on free speech in schools in the contexts of protests, student publications, religious speech, textbook selection, teacher speech, and civility. She also includes as a case study the Alaska case of the students who sued when suspended for displaying a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner. Well written, insightful, and occasionally humorous, this book is a great study of free speech in schools.
--Mark Bay (Library Journal )

Bring[s] fresh perspectives to an always vibrant area of the law...Dupre subtly makes the argument that the trend toward greater student speech rights since the 1960s has come at a cost to the larger "liberty of a nation."
--Mark Walsh (Education Week )

Dupre puts the free-speech-in-school debate in context, pointing up the difference between free speech granted to a kindergartner versus a college student, as students more and more often challenge the elders on free-speech issues.
--Vanessa Bush (Booklist )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (January 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674031148
• ISBN-13: 978-0674031142
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,784,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Important But Somewhat Slanted, May 11, 2009

By 

Bronx Book Guy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speaking Up: The Unintended Costs of Free Speech in Public Schools (Hardcover)

This book is written by a law professor and a former schoolteacher, so provides an important perspective, though one that at times was done in a somewhat slanted fashion.

For instance, and this is okay up to a point (it balances some works that do not provide enough a brief for the 'other side'), she is clearly supportive of judges giving more benefit of the doubt to school administrators. But, an important role of the courts is to do just the opposite: question the government when it claims a need to limit freedoms. This includes when children are involved.

This leads me to write this to suggest readers to bring some degree of caution. Let me touch upon a couple cases discussed to suggest where I am coming from.

The author starts with the Tinker armband ruling. Two problems at least stand out for me. First, she fails to lay some ground work to underline that this was not the first time the SC stepped into the schoolhouse & questioned the choices made by the state. They did so repeatedly by that point, particularly, but in no ways limited, to the flag salute case, that was framed by Justice Jackson (she discusses the case in a chapter on religion) as much of a free expression case as one about religious conduct. Second, the school allowed campaign buttons. An armband ... divisive ... a button by a peace candidate or a pro-segregation candidate ... or one that opposed the Civil Rights Act ... not divisive? The Court was rightly dubious.

Also, consider the Hazelwood school newspaper case. The author notes once that an appeals court "was persuaded by an article written by a law student." I went to the opinion and the article is cited, but before that, a line of court cases were as well. They did not "rely" on a student note alone. Ditto on another matter where the note was cited; not that such articles lack usefulness, particularly in a fairly new area of law as this was at the time. [Appeals court noted paucity of cases.]

Likewise, seriously, talking about sex and birth control is too controversial for high school students? The concern that the school would be assumed to be supportive of the view of the articles could have been dealt with by a warning. Again, not addressed by book.

I also don't know why it's an invasion of "privacy" to print personal stories with the consent of the person in question. When I talk about a personal experience, must I also get the consent of each and every person involved? Is this really typical "journalistic" practice? Teens talk about personal experiences in class all the time. The quotes cited in the article were rather uncontroversial.

And, as Justice Brennan noted in his dissent, it is unclear if some "right to respond" was really central to the censorship here. But, the author dealt with Justice Brennan's dissent in three sentences. Likewise, the book failed to note that students weren't notified beforehand about the decision to omit the articles in question or why. Nor, that the articles were still distributed (without the students being punished), so the value of the school's censorship was debatable. Or, that such "prior restraint" hits to the core of the 1A, which the school said was to be the guide to the students here.

A balanced account would have did a better job covering such topics, even if it still supported the Supreme Court ruling in this case. So, in no way am I saying the bottom line of this book -- that there are "unintended costs of free speech in public schools" is wrong. I am saying that it would have been better if she made her case in a less ... yes I think it fair ... biased fashion.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and lively discussion of First Amendment law in schools, October 7, 2009

By 

Melocoton (Villanow, GA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Speaking Up: The Unintended Costs of Free Speech in Public Schools (Hardcover)

I found this book to be a splendid discourse on speech issues in the school context. It provided just the right amount of context for some of the big cases that have come before the Supreme Court including the recent "Bong Hits for Jesus" case which I found intriguing.

The author expresses her opinion, giving life to what could be confusing material. I never felt that the author was neglecting issues or skipping over facts to support her views. Instead, I thought the author waded through a confusing and contradictory area of law and provided some perspective.
The author was formerly a school teacher and now a law professor at the University of Georgia. She also clerked at the Supreme Court while some of these cases were decided and in the book, she describes the theater and pomp when the Court is in session for a big case.

The book first goes through Tinker v. Des Moines (whether school officials could prohibit students from wearing an arm band protesting the Vietnam war at school) and this provides a constant thread throughout the book. Dupre then gets into the jurisprudence of student newspapers, the speech of teachers and administrators, and religious/prayer issues in school. I enjoyed the book and the material was presented in a way to make it memorable. Teachers and lawyers should both get a kick out of this.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too biased, December 23, 2009

By 

Bagels (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speaking Up: The Unintended Costs of Free Speech in Public Schools (Hardcover)

This book is written in such an opinionated manner that it's difficult to consider it serious legal scholarship. It reads more as one of the dime-a-dozen political books written not to inform but to persuade with convoluted arguments. I expect more from a law professor, especially one with such extensive credentials in not only law but also education.