Stanley Fish on the First Amendment Rights of Students and Teachers

Although [Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas does not make this point explicitly [in Morse v. Frederick], it seems clear that his approval of an older notion of the norms that govern student behavior stems from a conviction about how education should and should not proceed. When he tells us that it was traditionally understood that “teachers taught and students listened, teachers commanded and students obeyed,” he comes across as someone who shares that understanding.

As do I. If I had a criticism of Thomas, it would be that he does not go far enough. Not only do students not have first amendment rights, they do not have any rights: they don’t have the right to express themselves, or have their opinions considered, or have a voice in the evaluation of their teachers, or have their views of what should happen in the classroom taken into account. (And I intend this as a statement about college students as well as high-school students.)

One reason that students (and many others) have come to believe that they have these rights is a confusion between education and democracy. It is in democratic contexts that people have claims to the rights enumerated in the constitution and other documents at the heart of our political system – the right to free speech, the right to free assembly, the right to determine, by vote, the shape of their futures.

Educational institutions, however, are not democratic contexts (even when the principles of democracy are being taught in them). They are pedagogical contexts and the imperatives that rule them are the imperatives of pedagogy – the mastery of materials and the acquiring of analytical skills. Those imperatives do not recognize the right of free expression or any other right, except the right to competent instruction, that is, the right to be instructed by well-trained, responsible teachers who know their subjects and stick to them and don’t believe that it is their right to pronounce on anything and everything.

What this means is that teachers don’t have First Amendment rights either, at least while they are performing as teachers. Away from school, they have the same rights as anyone else. In school, they are just like their students, bound to the protocols of the enterprise they have joined. That enterprise is not named democracy and what goes on within it – unless it is abuse or harassment or assault – should not rise to the level of constitutional notice or any other notice except the notice of the professional authorities whose job it is to keep the educational machine running smoothly.

Link here.

Comments

[Sal B]

And we can truly teach democracy and freedom of speech without either actually occurring or being put into practice. Uh-huh.

[Mark]

Fish addresses that point explicitly. The point is, educational institutions, properly conceived, are venues for teaching critical thinking skills, not for political bantering.

As I've noted before, the best professors I ever had - and who I seek to emulate - were those who presented a spectrum of ideas, arguing the merits and shortcomings of each.

Unfortunately, too many in the academic world today consider their job as professing "truth" onto students . . . from their perspective. That creates the problem of students being captive guinea pigs for professorial dogma, frustrating students since speaking their opinions against their professor/teacher's ideological rant is not permitted, or likely at a cost to the student's grade or standing. And I don't believe any learning takes place by debating opinion, only by discussing facts.

Students do not have free speech in a classroom, but this is assuming that the educator, as Fish rightly notes, acts responsibly by teaching, not converting.