Caution on expanding student rights
By Walt Gardner
If the experience of the United States is any indication, the new guidelines proposed by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education to expand the rights of students are likely to have unintended consequences. What begins as a well- intentioned attempt to protect students from arbitrary rules eventually undermines the moral authority of teachers.
It’s the latter that rightly concerns the Korean Federation of Teachers. When teachers are stripped of their ability to discipline students, instruction invariably suffers. All it takes is one recalcitrant student to hold the rest of the class hostage. But when teachers are hamstrung by rules imposed by a central office, they are reluctant to take steps to restore order out of fear of the legal consequences.
The U.S. learned that lesson in 1975 when the Supreme Court in Goss v. Lopez ruled that students had the right to due-process protections for even the most minor misbehavior. That meant the right to know the charges against them, the right to a formal hearing, the right to legal counsel, and the right to call witnesses.
Making matters worse, the Supreme Court one year later held in Wood v. Strickland that if teachers or principals knowingly violated a student’s due-process rights, they could be held personally liable for punitive damages. The decision understandably had a chilling effect on the willingness of teachers or principals to address student behavior.
There was a time when teachers acted in loco parentis. They possessed the moral and legal authority to use their professional judgment in dealing with classroom misbehavior. No educator in South Korea or the U.S. wants to turn classrooms into Dickensian venues. But enabling students to establish their own rules, as the education office in South Korea proposes, sets the stage for chaos. As Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote in his dissent in Goss v. Lopez, students who fail to learn the necessity of rules will be handicapped throughout life.
In contrast, allowing students in South Korea to engage in political discussions and lowering the voting age to 18 for general elections are steps in the right direction, if the goal is to prepare them for their future civic responsibilities. Students in the U.S. have long had this right. The only caveat in both countries is that teachers present a balanced view of controversial issues in designing their lessons. The more contentious the issue, the more imperative it is for teachers to maintain objectivity.
Lowering the voting age to 18 is long overdue. Students today are more sophisticated than ever before as a result of their exposure to information and images. Long before the internet, however, the U.S. granted this right based on the argument that those old enough to be drafted and die for their country deserved the right to vote.
Schools in both countries are at an historic crossroads. The global economy makes it impossible to continue along the same path. But at the same time, great care needs to be taken not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. How to achieve a balance between the two will the subject of contentious debates in the years ahead.
Walt Gardner writes the Reality Check blog for Education Week in the U.S. Write to walt.gard376@gmail.com.