I love how the most patriotic expression of their love for the United States that Daxx and his father can think of is repeating unfounded smears about a political candidate.  That says a whole lot about their mindset right there.

Well, it seems the incantation of the ACLU’s versions of “free speech” is making the rounds.

Ugly stuff, yeah. But then that was never the point, eh?

Now how (obviously, as all manner of parents do this, chuckleheads) Dad is living “vicariously” through the kiddies.

How ‘bout..

Barak Obama: Allah’s Gentle Llama!

El al alck al SHARIA!

The first part fits on a T-shirt, too!

This is where my extremely liberal sensibilities roll over for the basic truth that school uniforms are a good thing, not least because they prevent kids from being walking billboards. It’s weird, though: I’m more offended by the idea of a one-day ‘wear red, white and blue’ patriotic thing than an all-the-time uniform.

I’m sure that Dann can give Daxx (and his siblings Dapp, Dagg, Daqq and Duck) the home-schooling experience he desires.

It probably is protected speech, at least it would have been thanks to the wackos of the Warren Court back in 1960s and the hippie Quakers of the Tinker v. Des Moines case. (I’m sure Dannnnnnnnn will be sure to mention that too.) Of course, the more recent conservatives have seriously restricted the Tinker decision, so it’s possible that it isn’t protected any more.
The fact that Fox News had the story almost as it was happening shows this was case of pure publicity. I’ll bet he doesn’t even try to sue.
And once more, if you are so sure that public schools are so bad, try finding somewhere else to teach them asshole. Or become a teacher yourself and encourage your think-alike friends to do the same. How liberal loony could they be when they were asking students to show their patriotism?

Well, coming from an ultra liberal state, with an ultra liberal school, where my eleven and nine year old are 100 percent behind obama and distributing “teachers for obama” buttons to their teachers I dont’ think we can assume that the kid didn’t want to wear what he was wearing, that he doesn’t have strong political opinions, or even that its wrong. Unless the school had a policy against inflammatory political t shirts, or logos and slogans, I wouldn’t have interfered with his free speech rights. Getting taken outback of the school and having the shit beat out of him privately is the way to go.

aimai

Pardon me, but the kid did make the comment:

““I felt like I should wear it, because I have a right to,” he added.”

Now, painting this as child abuse or making the automatic assumption that he was browbeaten into it, cowering under the tyrannical hand of his father and forced to slave in the t-shirt mines, is a bit much.  I could quite easily see even eleven year olds doing the same sort of thing from a liberal perspective (like, say, wearing black armbands to protest a war…)

They’re wingnuts, and the sentiment is goddamned stupid.  But why the hell are you assuming the kid has no agency, and why the hell are you assuming that there’s no right to speech?  Even stupid speech?

If there wasn’t a dress code he violated, then the punishment seems a bit much, IMAPFO.

And while “Daxx” is goddamned stupid, there are worse...

on a day when students were asked to show their patriotism by wearing red, white and blue

Well that right there is ridiculous, and I’m glad the Dalton family fucked it all up for the school.

This is probably constitutionally protected speech, and if it’s not, it should be.

All that said, it’s obvious that Daddy Dalton has zero respect for his family.

Yeah, I lean pretty hard toward school uniforms.  The local middle school has its kids all wear simple grey t-shirts with the school’s logo on them.  I really would not have minded that as a kid.

I think the absolute best course of action would have been to totally and completly ignore the shirt.  If I had been the teacher I would have even gone so far as to recognize others around him for wearing a “patriotic” shirt but would have absolutely, positively NOT recognized his shirt.

His dipshit daddy would have been robbed of his attempt to get his rocks off by getting a rise out of everyone - which, after all, is the only reason to do such a stupid thing.

But he’s been purposefully doing this kind of asshole shit for years, and I’m pretty sure the kid was goaded into it:

From the link you gave:

“But 11-year-old Daxx Dalton said he stands behind the message and believes school officials violated his free-speech rights by suspending him for three days.”

At what point, Jesse, do you allow people, even eleven year olds, to have agency?  Probably his father is the source of the desire (he sounds like a complete tool) - but the kid says he wants to go along with it.

My political sentiments were shaped a great deal by my mother. Back around 12 or 13, I was a supporter of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill here (decriminalizing “sodomy”) - I would have been bloody offended if some well meaning Evangelical had accused my mother of child abuse and dismissed my belief that discrimination was wrong as her “goading me into it”.

People have a right to be free to be stupid.  And we should mock them for their stupidity, not rail against their freedom.

The father’s complaining about liberalism in schools when the school held a compulsory display of national colors imposed on the students?

I wonder if the kid even knew what his shirt meant.

I’m with animai on this.  The kid, depending on the school rules (which are always arguable) may have a right to wear something that stupid.  If it doesn’t violate a rule in place it should have been left to the liebrul and demonrat schoolmates of young daxx to instruct him on what is and isn’t a good idea to wear on your homemade t-shirt.

And with all that said, daxx’s sperm donor is a real fucking prick.  As though politics aren’t polarized and stupidly shrill enough, we need to have our kids wearing idiotic shit on their t-shirts in order to piss off their classmates because we all know that not one kid there who might have had some personal convictions about the election wasn’t going to have their mind changed by that phrasing.

Honestly, sometimes I think procreation should be licensed.*

*that’s a joke, of course.

When I was overweight in school, if I had to wear a uniform I would probably have been harassed even more than I was.  Being able to dress for your size and body shape is important, especially if you have low self-esteem and body image issues.  A standard-issue uniform would have been pretty bad, unless it was a knit cotton shirt and loose jeans.  Somehow I’m seeing pleated pants and sweater vests or skirts and stiff button-down shirts.  Ick . . . .

As for this kid’s political message, I’m sure Daddy likes spreading the Gospel of Crazy in his kid’s school, but I feel sorry for the kid.  He’s too young to know how dumb that shirt is, but old enough to still get attitude from other students about it.  If he wants to wear it and the school doesn’t have a policy against political t-shirts or any kind of non-corporate message, I say go for it.  You reap what you sow.  And most kids even that young are aware of the social dynamics of speech and message (i.e. there are consequences for what you say, or put on your chest).  Some other kid might actually say something to the freeper kid that gets him to think Obama may not actually be a terrorist . . . .

People have a right to be free to be stupid.  And we should mock them for their stupidity, not rail against their freedom.

I agree.  This is why any time someone tells me I’m being a meany by criticizing religion, Christianity, other religions, religious people or particular interpretations of religious documents/dogma I throw my head back and roar an evil, maniacal laugh, and keep going.

Well, it seems the incantation of the ACLU’s versions of “free speech” is making the rounds.

I see we have a brain-damaged conservative in the audience today.

Let’s see how the ACLU has come down in similar cases:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/aclu-says-court-strikes-appropriate,366639.shtml

CHICAGO, April 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/—The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois today agreed with the balance struck by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving the right of a high school student to wear a t-shirt with the message, “Be Happy, not Gay.” The appellate court held that the trial court should have granted the student a preliminary injunction protecting his First Amendment right to wear the t-shirt.

The ACLU filed an amicus brief in February in this case detailing the two fundamental rights implicated by the case: first, the fundamental right for public high school students to exercise their right to free speech, including the in-school expression of controversial and offensive messages; and second, a fundamental right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of protected status, including race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability status.

“The court carefully weighed these two fundamental interests in our public schools and struck the appropriate balance as to this t-shirt,” said Adam Schwartz, Senior Staff Counsel for the ACLU of Illinois. “Ensuring the free exchange of ideas—even controversial ideas—while protecting students against undue harassment fosters an environment where students are best able to learn, explore new ideas and mature.”

Dann Dalton should call the ACLU. They’ll gladly represent his stupid ass.

At what point, Jesse, do you allow people, even eleven year olds, to have agency?  Probably his father is the source of the desire (he sounds like a complete tool) - but the kid says he wants to go along with it.

And just what is your point? Sure the kid went along with it. But any honest reading of the father’s “encouragement” shows this much: the kid wouldn’t have done it if his father hadn’t planned it for him.

So the kid has some agency. Nevertheless, the father has disrespected his son by pushing him toward a political action that he would not have taken up entirely on his own.

People have a right to be free to be stupid.  And we should mock them for their stupidity, not rail against their freedom.

And Jesse’s not bitching about freedom, he’s pointing out bad parenting. How dishonest are you, to put words in Jesse’s mouth.

Please tell me his sister is Jadzia.  Please.

The school probably does have a legitimate defense here—there’s usually a clause that reads something to the effect of “clothing that detracts from the learning experience is prohibited,” which leaves a lot of this up to the judgment of the administrators.

And these broad clauses are regularly thrown out on grounds of unconstitutionality. Private schools can require this; public schools cannot. In the case of Nuxoll et.al. v. Indian Prairie School District #204 that I just cited above:

According to the ACLU, courts should view these controversies through the standard set forth in the landmark school speech case, Tinker v. Des Moines, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1969. Based on that decision, public high school officials cannot censor speech unless they can “reasonably . . . forecast” that disputed speech will cause a “substantial disruption” of school activities or impinge on the “rights of other students.” Unfortunately, the public high school in this case argues that schools can suppress student speech whenever such speech conflicts with the school’s basic educational mission—a standard that improperly would allow censorship of most student free speech.

The policy at Ms Kate’s kid’s school would fall under Tinker if it were challenged, for example.

In this case the fact of the shirt’s message would be considered, and I can’t predict whether mentioning terrorism will be found as “substantially disruptive.” But these wide clauses, about anything that “detracts from the learning experience,” are unconstitutional.

Please tell me his sister is Jadzia.  Please

No, his idiot father probably went with Esri.

In this case the fact of the shirt’s message would be considered, and I can’t predict whether mentioning terrorism will be found as “substantially disruptive.” But these wide clauses, about anything that “detracts from the learning experience,” are unconstitutional.

Tinker has been greatly curtailed by conservative lower courts - I don’t believe that it’s been revisited by the Supreme Court, but the Tinker standard may not be in effect where ever this school - or Ms. Kate’s - happens to be.

My 8-year-old wore his Obama t-shirt to school yesterday. Public school, but no uniforms and no rules against shirts with words on ‘em. I like it that the kids can express their own style. (The kids who want to wear fauxhawks are free to do so, to.) Last week, the school security guy was wearing his Obama cap. It’s Chicago—I’m guessing nobody was put out by an Obama shirt or hat here.

I suppose some of you condemn political shirts on third-graders, but I’m sticking by it.

I suppose some of you condemn political shirts on third-graders, but I’m sticking by it.

Out of curiosity, how many third graders vote?

I find it interesting that the father considered himself a “proud” conservative.  WTF does that mean, exactly? I know that there are conservatives who are self-aware enough to be ashamed of what the meaning of “conservatism” has become, but what kind of intellectual contortions are required to be “proud” of that?

I’m not the sharpest knife on the drawer, but I grew out of this black/white, angry, you’re-not-the-boss-of-me conservatism when I was about 14.

  And we should mock them for their stupidity, not rail against their freedom.

Did I ever do anything else?

“The issue of the response to the t-shirt aside (chances are it was a constitutionally protected form of speech), children aren’t political props sent out to suffer the slings and arrows of whatever bullshit you want to incite to prove once and for all that you have the biggest dick in the PTA.  [...] The response to the child’s shirt was brought upon by the father’s insistence that he wear it.”

Blaming the father for all of this seems pretty close.  Whatever the status of the father, the kid seems to have made the choice to go along with it.  To the extent that an eleven year old can adopt a political stance, he’s adopted his, whether it’s because his father supplied it or not. We should honour his right to do so - acknowledge that he had some agency in this - even if we attempt to make him burst out in tears and be traumatised for life at the stupidity of said choice.

PiaToR, it is the responsibility of a parent to say, “you’re not going out of the house looking like that” when the need arises. Also, it’s a bit mean to mock an 11-year-old, but it’s fair to mock an adult, like the father.

Dann Dalton should call the ACLU. They’ll gladly represent his stupid ass.

Hell, his buddy Rush turned to the ACLU in his time of legal troubles!

I am concerned about red, white and blue day, however.  What would my kids do if their school had the same thing?  They’re German citizens.  What if they don’t want to wear red, white, and blue?

Tell them that, by wearing the colors of the French flag, they are undermining the jingoistic display.

Vive la Résistance!

“Getting taken outback of the school and having the shit beat out of him privately is the way to go.”

I’d put my money on Daxx vs aimi’s little brood most any day.  Anyone care to wager?

Don’t get too confident, Dr. T…I was as bleeding-heart as they come, even in Junior High, but I beat the everloving shit out of the racist shithead who called my best friend the n-word.

I’m still glad he had health insurance to cover that front tooth of his I broke.

Oh yeah…the other liberal little kid I grew up with is now the world’s Leftiest Marine. There’s no genetic law that says liberals can’t be ginormous and muscle-y.

As a high school teacher who was involved in a student’s suspension yesterday for a similar reason, I want to insert this point: he may not have been suspended for wearing the shirt.

The students here have a uniform that expressly forbids hoodies, of which the students are all perfectly aware; between classes, I walk down the hall and confiscate them. This particular student was asked to remove the hoodie, said “okay,” and walked away. Two minutes later the student appeared, still wearing the hoodie, and I told her to take it off and give it to me. She refused, got disrespectful, walked away while I was talking to her, began cursing, and disappeared into a classroom. While there, she apparently (according to that teacher) was disruptive and disrespectful. A few minutes later, she left the classroom without that teacher’s permission, stormed into the principal’s office, and demanded permission to wear her hoodie. When she was told again to remove it, she refused, and was at that point sent home for the rest of the day and suspended.

Short version, which she will tell her friends: “That bitch Ms. P suspended me and all I was doing is wearing a hoodie!”

My point is that it doesn’t say that he was suspended for wearing the shirt. He was suspended “after he refused to take off [the] shirt”. At that point, it’s not necessarily a free speech issue—it’s an issue of compliance with instructions from a school authority. If he was punished for wearing a shirt, it would be a free speech issue; but here, it seems to me to be likely that the issue is one of insubordination.

Then again, it may be recent personal experience talking.

<i>I’d put my money on Daxx vs aimi’s little brood most any day.  Anyone care to wager?>/i>

You know, that’s what the girl who picked a fight with me freshman year of high school thought, too.

I had my hands around her throat when the teachers broke it up.  And she was a good 3 or 4 inches taller than me.

So, yeah, bad idea to decide who you can pick on just by outward appearances.

No, third-graders don’t have the vote. But you know what? Barack Obama makes a helluva hero for a mixed-race kid, and I feel he represents the ideals of social justice I’m trying to raise my kid to have an appreciation for. Would I let my kid wear a shirt that said “McCain Voters Are Stupid”? No. But I don’t think an “Obama 2008” shirt is the same thing.

From the local news coverage, the school was fine with the boy wearing the shirt, until it started an argument on the playground that carried over into math class.

Aurora Public Schools Superintendent John Barry said the school district does not punish students for expressing themselves.

“We do not suspend students for exercising their first amendment rights,” said Barry.

Daxx Dalton said staff members approached him shortly after arriving at Aurora Frontier K-8 school with the shirt on last Thursday.

“This one teacher came up to me and said I had to take the t-shirt off, and I said, ‘No.’”

Daxx said other students reacted as well.

“One kid said I was a racist,” Daxx said while adding some students said nothing, and others said they were in support of the message.

The superintendent said the shirt created a disruption in the playground that carried over to the classroom.

“In this case, response to the student’s shirt resulted in a very loud argument on the playground before school,” Barry told reporters Tuesday while reading from a prepared news release.

“The student was screaming and loudly arguing with other students. When students went to class, the discussion continued and disrupted learning in a math classroom,” the release stated.

Barry reiterated to reporters the suspension was based on behavior related to the disruption and not solely the shirt alone.

Daxx said he was given a choice of changing his shirt, turning it inside-out or being suspended, and he chose suspension.

[snip]

Barry said students have been wearing political shirts at the school for some time now.

“Students at this school and throughout the district have been wearing endorsement shirts for both presidential candidates,” Barry said. “Because these shirts have not caused disruptions, students have not been asked to remove them.”

He said Daxx’s younger sister wore an anti-Obama shirt the same day and because it was wasn’t disruptive, she wasn’t asked to change it.

Does your freedom of speech extend to saying lies or starting fights?

At that point, what could the school do?

Of course, it’s very much like the schools who tell transgender and kids blamed of being homosexual to ‘not be’ so that they won’t be beat up in class.

Ms. P,

You happen to be entirely wrong.  Unless the shirt was banned by a constitutional policy against shirts with writing on them (which might be tough to draft) making a student remove the shirt is impeding his free speech rights.  That is why your hoodie example is off—because it pertains to a certain type of clothing, not the message on the clothing.

Meghan,

Regarding the disagreement/argument on the playground, although this doctrine has not yet (as far as I know) been discussed in a case involving schoolchildren, there is a first amendment concept know as the “no heckler’s veto” rule.  What this means is that if the speaker’s message causes others to react violently against him/her, this cannot be used as an excuse to curtail his/her speech.  Instead, those who are reacting violently in disagreement with the message must be limited.

So, if he was being disruptive in the playground, yes, he could be punished, but not for wearing the shirt.

Ismone, the school’s position is that he is being punished for the disruption and not the shirt.

It appears to me that even the disruption on the playground wasn’t an issue, it was only when the disruption continued into math class that it became a problem.

At that point, the school had a responsibility to end the dispute and the simplest way to do that was to remove the cause of the disruption. To that end Daxx was given the choice to remove the shirt or himself and he chose to remove himself.

If that was the wrong way for the school to deal with a disruption in math class, what would have been the correct way?

Meghan,

Whenever the wingnuts get all puffed up with outrage the “X” happened, I always assume that “X” never happened, or at best it happened but not the way they said it happened

”The kids who want to wear fauxhawks are free to do so, to.”

OT but curious,

What is a fauxhawks?

To get the disruptors to save the extraneous discussion for later, not to make him remove the shirt.  If the real problem was disruptive talking, you tell the children they can talk at a later time.  It’s not like the other kids would forget what his shirt said once it was removed and no longer be angry.

A “fauxhawk” is a fake mohawk, made by sculpting the hair into that shape, but not shaving it.

PiaToR, it is the responsibility of a parent to say, “you’re not going out of the house looking like that” when the need arises.

The father is a dumb-ass.  We already knew that 8-)

Also, it’s a bit mean to mock an 11-year-old, but it’s fair to mock an adult, like the father.

Aww, poor widdle baby wingnut gonna get his fee-fees hurt?

Nah, I figure anyone who wants to start expressing wingnut tendencies deserves to be stomped on good and hard right from the start.  Having people pointing at you and laughing may get the point across.

Think of it as grandmotherly kindness.

” Yeah, I lean pretty hard toward school uniforms.  The local middle school has its kids all wear simple grey t-shirts with the school’s logo on them.  I really would not have minded that as a kid.”

Why aren’t all school uniforms like this?
I always oppose public schools uniforms as a knee-jerk reaction (Uniforms? They’s in school, not the army, fer Christ sake!)
But what really ticks me off is that the default uniform instantly became Catholic School circa 1955
I have yet to see a kid who said “man, I bet I could understand this material if only I was wearing scratchy wool pants and a tie”

Where my husband taught, kids wore combinations of twill pants or skirts with either white button down shirts or a polo shirt with the school logo in school colors.  It could be found in all sizes and looked good on all sizes of students, provided that parents bought new stuff when the kids grew.  Siblings could hand stuff down this way, a huge savings in adolescence.

As for “red white and blue” day, my sons wear whatever they want - not compulsory in most places.  Last time, younger son got a gleam in his eye and reached for his patriotic blue Toronto Maple Leafs shirt.

No school from my childhood on, at least, and probably not before my time, allowed children the same rights of free speech as adults. Profanity on shirts, and anything that could provoke a fight, are the most common targets of clothing censorship. As someone pointed out above, a shirt like that could definitely get a kid beaten by his classmates.

But I *strongly* believe adults have a responsibility to keep kids from being bullied, even kids we don’t like or who maybe need to learn a lesson. And so the duty of the supervising adults is to tell him he needs to change his shirt or at least turn it inside out.

provided that parents bought new stuff when the kids grew.  Siblings could hand stuff down this way, a huge savings in adolescence.

When the public schools in my area instituted uniforms, a few interesting things happened.

1.  The local shops (even big chains) started carrying the regulation clothes at back-to-school time.  This was prety easy as the uniforms were, as you mentioned, polos in school colors or white button-downs with a limited choice of neutral chino pants or skirts (khaki, navy, grey, burgundy, depending on the school).  You could buy them at all price points, pretty much anywhere from WalMart to the swank local ‘menswear’ shops.

2.  All the local thrift shops put in a a few racks of gently used uniforms.

3.  Most churches and community groups started up uniform drives for hand me downs for people who couldn’t even afford Walmart or a thrift store.

to continue the tangent, i see the benefits of some type of school uniform, but it would have driven me bonkers as a kid to have to wear such a thing.  i was a rebellious child. i also love clothes.  really fun, sometimes out-there clothes were often a major source of comfort and pride for me from middle school on as a means of both personal aesthetic expression, but more importantly expression of being distinct from the conforming influence of my suburban bible-belt superconformist school.

just saying.

The students here have a uniform that expressly forbids hoodies, of which the students are all perfectly aware

forbids hoodies?  sorry this statement distracted me form the entire discussion - do hoodies pose some sort of danger?