John Whitehead's Commentary

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."--Milan Kundera

Looking at America's public schools today, it may be difficult to imagine that they were once considered the hope of freedom and democracy. According to a report by the Acton Institute:

Ninety-five percent of American 17-year-olds cannot read well enough to understand technical materials and literary essays. This means that only about 5 percent of America's 17-year-olds can read well enough to understand the Bible... Almost one-third of 17-year-olds do not know that Columbus discovered the New World before 1750!

Many public schools, now equipped with barbed wire, metal detectors and police roaming the halls, look more like prisons than institutions of higher learning. And with the implementation of draconian zero tolerance policies, children have been suspended for innocently bringing mouthwash, aspirin, nail clippers, lemon drops and the like to school.

The horrific lesson being taught to our young people--by the very school officials we have entrusted to shape them into tomorrow's leaders--is that the government has absolute power over its citizens. As a result, young people have very little freedom at all. If the old saying is true, that what one generation learns in the schools is the philosophy of the next, then the philosophy of the next generation will be totalitarianism.

As political correctness has come to dominate every aspect of our society, including our schools, free speech may also be headed for the graveyard. Here are just a few recent examples of the totalitarian mindset as it relates to how free speech is being taught--or not taught--in the schools.

As more than 1,000 people watched, school officials pulled the plug on Nicholas Noel's commencement speech when the 2004 senior class president strayed from his approved speech and referred to Grand Rapids Union High School as a "prison." Noel returned to his seat and school officials, perhaps hoping to add insult to injury, initially refused to award him his diploma.

In his speech, Noel had described the school as a "prison" because students were "expected to act alike." His message was that high school paints a picture of life for students that is incomplete. "The colors of life are yet to come," Noel said. "It was really nice, nothing in bad taste. I tried to be different, and I was punished."

In another instance, graduating senior Brittany McComb was chosen to give the valedictory speech at Foothill High School in Nevada. After composing her remarks, she submitted them to school administrators according to standard district policy. School administrators, with the advice of their district legal counsel (and backed by the ACLU), censored her speech, deleting all three Bible references, several references to "the Lord" and the only mention of the word "Christ."

McComb delivered her graduation address on June 15, 2006. However, believing that the district's censorship amounted to a violation of her right to free speech, she attempted to deliver the original version of her speech, not the edited one. When school officials realized that she was straying from the approved text, they unplugged her microphone, thus ending the address. The move drew extended jeers from the more than 400 people in the audience.

School officials justified their actions by claiming that McComb's speech amounted to proselytizing. But Brittany insisted that she was merely stating her thoughts and beliefs, as she had been invited to do. Assisted by The Rutherford Institute, she is challenging the school's actions in the belief that the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech should have kept her plugged in. As Brittany remarked, "People aren't stupid. They know we have freedom of speech, and the district wasn't advocating my ideas. Those are my opinions. It's what I believe."

Another example: Henry M. Jackson High School has a policy of allowing the school's wind ensemble to select one piece from its repertoire to perform at the graduation ceremony each year. This year, graduating seniors unanimously selected an instrumental version of "Ave Maria" by the German composer Franz Biebl. No lyrics were to be sung, nor were any to be distributed to the audience.

The ensemble's decision was vetoed by the school administration because the instrumental piece was deemed religious in nature. To Kathryn Nurre, an 18-year-old member of the ensemble, it's a question of free speech. As Nurre pointed out, the "Ave Maria" piece chosen for the graduation ceremony was selected for its artistic merit, not its religious content. Having previously been performed at a school concert, with no apparent discomfort on the part of the school, the piece was a part of the school's curriculum. In Nurre's view, the school's decision to cut the musical piece was clearly a sign of its hostility toward religion. With the help of The Rutherford Institute, Kathryn Nurre has now filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the school.

These examples of insidious discrimination are not new. A glimpse of German history provides us an ominous parallel: On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. Two days later, a 26-year-old minister named Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a national radio address protesting Hitler's election in a radio sermon/speech entitled "The Younger Generation's Changed View of the Concept of Fuhrer." Throughout his speech, Bonhoeffer warned the people of Germany that the "Fuhrer" (leader) could very easily become a "Verfuhrer" (seducer), noting that the two words are only three letters different from each other. While Bonhoeffer was remarking that a leader who makes himself an idol mocks God, the broadcast was cut off in mid-sentence and the station returned to playing classical German music--music that would soon accompany goose-stepping Nazis as they ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of the twentieth century.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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