Free Speech Should Be Allowed In Schools Essay

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Hook
The First Amendment to the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law.. abridging (limiting) the freedom of speech..” For many years, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government. But in 1925, in Gitlow vs New York, the Supreme Court said that it also applied to other levels of government. This applies to public schools (Background Essay). The right to free speech is not absolute, however. THe Supreme Court has alloed certain limits on the freedom. For example, speech that create immediate danger is not protected. As well as speech designed to start a fight, speech that presents sexual content in an offensive way, and when, where, and how the speech occurs can be limited (Background Essay). Today many free speech issuses center around the use of technology. Before the Internet and cell phones, if you said something about a classmate, the information might have reached 20 or 30 people. Now, if you …show more content…

Accoring to the graph of a Survey of British School Teachers, almost hald of cyberbullyed teachers say it was perpetrated by a student, and of these teacher 12.5% say they had to go to a doctor or take a sick leave, suffering from illness/stress. Even more, 5% of these cyberbullyed teachers said they became scared outside of work. This is too much. Teachers should be free to teach well without threats or accussations from their own students. In the case of J.S. vs Blue Mountain School District, J.S. created a MySpace profile making fun of her middle school principal, James McGonigle. The profile did not name the principal or his school, but did include a photo of him and contained some vulgar and offensive language. Even more, the United States Court of Appeals for the Thrid Circuit decreed that the School District violated J.S.’s First Amendment free speech rights. It may be free speech, but as states before, it is harmful speech, and things like this must be