9 states have legislated the Academic Freedom of Students and Teachers to discuss Intelligent Design and a Creator God. The United States Supreme Court has spoken several times on the subject of academic freedom. In the high court’s view judges “will not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study, to evaluate.” Sweezy v New Hampshire (1957) The United States Supreme Court has emphatically stated that the freedoms of “speech and inquiry and of belief are fundamental values to safeguard, especially in our educational system.” Epperson v State (1968) Moreover, the court has made it clear that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Local School Boards and the Curriculum. In matters of curriculum, state law vests local boards of education with considerable authority and control. Local communities, through their elected or appointed school boards, have a legitimate and compelling interest in the choice of a suitable curriculum for the benefit their children. Virgil v School Board (1989) In addition to state mandated requirements, local community standards and attitudes impact on curriculum. It therefore follows that local boards of education legally possess and exercise broad discretion in regulating the content of a school’s general curriculum and the specific instruction (including both the subjects taught and the teaching methods) in each classroom. Newton v Slye (2000) In practice, however, a balance must be struck between the interests of a board (as employer) and the interests of a teacher (as professional) in promoting the efficiency of the educational services performed on behalf of the community. Hudgins and Vacca (1999) Classroom Teachers and the Curriculum. In their classrooms teachers cannot be made to simply read from officially approved lessons. Carey v Board of Education (1979) They are given considerable leeway in the preparation of lessons. As a general rule, courts consider classroom methodologies and techniques as the professional prerogative of teachers. Owasso ISD v Falvo (2002) However, the education of school children is not left to the whim of individual teachers to teach what they please, whenever they please, an in any way they please. Peloza v Capistrano (1994) As the United States Supreme Court reminded us more than fifty-years ago, “A teacher works in a sensitive area in the schoolroom. There he (or she) shapes the attitudes of young minds towards the society in which they live.” Adler v Board of Education (1952) What is more, classroom teachers do not have a “constitutional right to require others [i.e., students] to submit to their views and to forgo a portion of their education they would be entitled to.” Palmer v Board of Education (1980).
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 17:44:52 +0000
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