Stanley Kurtz writes for National Review Online about another reason for partisan splits.
K–12 students have a First Amendment right to protest peacefully in school — wearing armbands, writing for the school paper, etc. — but students have no right to disrupt classrooms with strikes and walkouts.
Students are legally obligated to attend school, and parents rightly expect that their children will not be pressured into taking political positions, much less illegal actions, by administrators, teachers, or outside groups. Yet for a decade, student walkouts for political protests have been normalized, even encouraged, by teachers’ unions, advocates of “action civics,” university admissions offices, and adult political activists. Now, Democratic politicians are openly trying to egg on student walkouts, while Republicans are saying “no more.” …
… Republican leaders in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma have moved to block walkouts, especially when abetted by teachers and administrators. The exception is Idaho, where a disappointing tie vote in committee blocked a bill that would have discouraged student walkouts.
As walkouts spread and divide the parties, the issue is drawing ever more attention at the local, state, and national levels. This higher profile for the walkout issue is helpful, not only because it lays bare Democratic radicalism, but because it increases the likelihood that red states, at least, will prepare for the next wave. Unless states pass laws that discourage student walkouts, they’ll continue to be caught unawares when the next disruption comes. So, let’s take a closer look at what’s been happening in the states. There we’ll find not only potential solutions, but evidence that the besetting sins of student walkouts cannot be reformed away or eliminated by better supervision. Walkouts themselves must end. …
… There is no First Amendment right to walk out of school. Students are perfectly free to express themselves politically, but they must do so in school by wearing T-shirts, writing op-eds, etc., not by walking out.
