Well, *I* was listening. I think others were, too.
I still agree with you in terms of adults. I just think children--at an institution they are forced to attend--are a special case.
Do me a favor? Go read about the anti-war black armband case. It was Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District. There's plenty of resources to be found through Google.
This was during the 1960s. Passions running high. People were dying in Viet Nam. Hateful, volatile protests by both sides. Children in the schools whose fathers had been killed in Viet Nam, or were at the time in combat in Viet Nam.
Extremely volatile situation all over the country. (Remember Kent State?)
The Supreme Court said, in Tinker, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
The Court held that in order for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint," allowing schools to forbid conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school. The Court found that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption and held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech.
The very first enumerated finding in Tinker was this:
In wearing armbands, the petitioners were quiet and passive. They were not disruptive and did not impinge upon the rights of others. In these circumstances, their conduct was within the protection of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth.
Shall we replace the word "armbands" with the word "t-shirts" and see if it still fits?
Surely there were students at that school whose fathers, brothers, uncles were at that moment in combat in Viet Nam, or had been killed or maimed in Viet Nam. Surely there were students at that school who in fact had extremely good reasons to be
highly offended by the armband-wearing students.
And yet.... that's not enough for schools to infringe the free-speech rights of the other students.
If the anti-war black armbands in the 1960s, in the volatile milieu of that time, were not "disruptive" enough to justify the suppression of free speech of students in school, it's laughable to think that American-flag t-shirts worn on what is essentially a drinking holiday could possibly be sufficiently "disruptive" to justify the suppression of free speech of students in school.
Yes, even students have free speech rights, and even students who are offended have to learn to deal with it. Whether you're a kid with a dead father killed in a war or a Mexican-American kid wanting to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.
Free speech is more than an empty slogan. Free speech means that you will be exposed to messages you
really really don't like, and you have to deal with it. Everyone does. We all do. Every last one of us.