Schools are not parents

If a child’s parents are unreconstructed racists and expose him to all sorts of bigotry at home, are we to assume that he can be punished even if he is a model student when within the grounds of the school? If not, why not? What about clothes? Should one be punished for wearing offensive or commercial-heavy clothing in one’s own yard if there is a possibility that other schoolchildren might see the offending words from the school bus? What about more conservative school districts that do not tolerate cross-dressing children in the classroom? If Charles dresses up as Charlotte for a day and roams around the lawn, would our progressive arbiters of taste be content if his school later punished him for it?

The British free-speech outrages that I have catalogued here over the past two years are a neat demonstration of what happens when a society begins to privilege the subjective “discomfort” of individual citizens over the universal principles of liberty and the rule of law. The city code in Virginia Beach holds that it is in no way illegal for children in Virginia Beach to own or fire airsoft guns on private property, affirming that “no person shall use a pneumatic gun except at approved shooting ranges or within private property.” And yet according to the website of TV station WAVY in Portsmouth, Va., the 911 caller who sparked the incident evidently believed that her sensibilities trumped both the laws of the state and the sacred distinction between the public and the private.