Libertarian Rock

Drowsy at school? Ask for a later start time.

Rockstar — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:53:09 +0000

Some schools have moved their start times to later in the morning and students are now more alert and less prone to arguing.

“In one of the most recent studies, published last month in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, Owens and colleagues found that, after a change in start time from 8 to 8:30 a.m., students at a small, private New England high school reported fewer depressed feelings (a shift from 65.8% to 45%), better moods (from 84% reporting irritated and annoyed feelings to 62.6%); and less sleepiness during the day. (Before the shift, 69.1% of students said they rarely or never got a good night’s sleep compared with 33.7% after the shift, for example.)”

Just 30 more minutes of sleep can improve the entire day. If you can’t home school yourself, at least make mandatory schooling less onerous by asking for changes at your school:

Move the start time to later in the morning
Let students skip the first class period and possibly take a class after the the normal school day. The school day would start and end at different times for different students.

Some parents may argue the earlier start times will prevent them from arriving at work by the normal start of the work day at 9:00 a.m. These parents could negotiate later start times with their employers, so their children don’t need to wake up unnecessarily early and trudge through their day on inadequate rest.

Another approach would be to get your school to restrict the amount of homework teachers can assign so you can go to sleep earlier. As noted in other posts, people with full-time jobs don’t usually have “homework”. They do their work during the day, then go home and relax and spend time with their families and friends. If a teacher believes students should do work on their own, let the teacher allocate time in class for that work. Half or two thirds of the class could be for instruction, and the rest for self-study. Either way, less work done at home would allow students to get to bed earlier.

Read the LA Times story.

Read a related story: Freedom at lunchtime! Students do what they want.

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Kentucky seeks to raise exodus age from regimentation

Rockstar — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:00:23 +0000

Members of the Kentucky mob (aka government) recently sought to increase the exodus age (aka dropout age) from the local regimentation centers (aka public schools). Local press promoted the bill as likely to pass but a procedural vote squashed it.

The mobsters wanted to raise the exodus age from 16 to 18, over the course of two years, starting in 2013. They used two political techniques: (1) set a future date (2) and gradually tighten the restriction. However, any restriction at any time, now or in the future, must be a call to fight. Fortunately, a fight is not needed at this time. Though, the mobsters will be back, and next time they might postpone the change 10 years into the future to further dampen resistance.

The words of the bill remove some of the shine from the euphemism of “public schools.” The bill begins with, “AN ACT relating to compulsory school attendance.” An even more accurate start would be, AN ACT relating to regimentation of young citizens to make them respond to hourly bells, top-down instruction, humiliation, lack of privacy, peer bullying….

Fight back by trying to lower the exodus age in your town. No age is too young. 15, 14…11. For those of you younger than the exodus age, try to switch to self-learning (aka home schooling) or get your GED and then apply to a tech company with a founder without a college degree, or better, without a “high school” regimentation degree.

Read a related story.

Read the bill.

See the vote history.

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Prom cancelled to avoid lesbian couple

Rockstar — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:31:39 +0000

A local regimentation center (aka, “public school”) cancelled a prom to avoid letting a lesbian couple attend, with one female hoping to wear a tux. The ACLU threatened to sue the regimentation center. Two female students asked to attend after reading a memo that required one’s date to be of the opposite sex.

In every setback there is opportunity. The idea of having a party tied to a regimentation center could be a gone forever if students/inmates join together to host a private prom–free from their conservative neighbors who use the regimentation center to squash any type of unique behavior, including unconventional romantic interests.

A private prom would welcome individuality, not conformity. All would be welcome: individuals with any sexual interest, those who prefer casual clothes, students of any age. All these individuals could join together for one night to celebrate life, friendship, love, and the pending liberation of the oldest in attendance from the regimentation center.

See related article on Huffington Post.

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Parents sue school for viewing son with webcam

Rockstar — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:48:42 +0000

A government school in Pennsylvania used cameras and microphones on laptops issued to students to locate missing laptops and, oh by the way, to also monitor students. Yes, the “telescreen” devices from the book 1984 have arrived in 2010. Parents of a monitored student have sued the school after receiving a photo of their son engaging in what the school considered to be inappropriate behavior.

The school has turned off the monitoring program and students, taking no chances, have taped over the webcams and the microphones. The FBI will investigate to see if the school broke federal law.

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., filed the lawsuit. In their lawsuit, they asked the judge “to issue a restraining order preventing the district from remotely activating the webcams on student notebooks. They also requested that the judge block the district from recalling the laptops from students, saying that they believe school officials will then wipe the MacBooks’ hard drives to delete evidence of any camera activation.”

The school has since admitted to using the cameras and microphones to located missing laptops. However, the parents claimed the laptop was not reported missing at the time.

On the TV Program The Early Show, the student said the principal accused him of selling drugs and taking pills. So now there’s a motive for the principal.

It’s no surprise that an official with such control over students would try to grab more control by monitoring students at home. If the state can take someone’s children for eight hours a day, I guess these officials figured camera monitoring was less offensive – which it is.

Faced with losing their Orwellian surveillance device, the school is probably going to ask the state government to proceed to the next logical step of forced schooling and require students to become full-time boarders at the school. Or maybe take an intermediate step and require students to stay at the school/prison until 9 or 10 p.m., at least until the local curfew kicks in.

Read a Computer World article.

Read a CBS News article.

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Suspended for Facebook page, student can sue

Rockstar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:20:31 +0000

A federal judge ruled a former high school student suspended for creating a Facebook page that criticized her English teacher can sue the high school principal who suspended her. The page entitled “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever had” attracted current and former students, some of whom criticized the teacher and others who offered support. The student, Katherine Evans, took down the page after a few days. Two months later, the principal suspended her for creating the page. Represented by the ACLU, the student, now in a second year college student, wants the suspension expunged from her record, payment for legal fees, and a nominal award. See news coverage and legal info.

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Germans flee to home school in US

Rockstar — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:05:59 +0000

For all we write about persecution in the United States, when it comes to home schooling, German citizens flee their country for the freedom to teach their children. A US judge recently granted asylum to a German family with five children. The article in the French paper, Le Monde, used accurate language to describe the goverment’s “free” “public” “school system” as compulsory schooling. However, the article cast home schooling as driven by religious views, when it’s about allowing people the right to study what they want and how they want. The idea of sitting in a room with 30 other people with different abilities and interests, yet all being forced to learn the same subject is not what many would call smart schooling.

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“Free Range Kids”

Rockstar — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:58:56 +0000

A New York City mom who allows her nine-year-old son to ride the subway wrote an article about her mothering ways and became an overnight news story, cast as the “Worst Mom in America.” Many hate e-mails later, the mom wrote a book called “Free Range Kids” and now maintains a blog to argue that childhood is about discovering the world, not being held captive, and some of kids’ fondest memories are those on their own. With more mom’s thinking that children deserve more freedom, the less likely it is that power-hungry politicians hell-bent on showing they’re tough on crime will propose laws restricting the actions of teenagers. If kids deserve free range, they don’t deserve government schools with locked-down campuses. It wouldn’t be surprising if the author decided to home school her son, giving him “free range” to learn what interests him, rather than topics chosen by the federal and state government or the local school board.

Defending her practice to allow her son to take the subway along, the author argues abductions are about as common as they have been for decades. The chance of a child being abducted are less likely than falling off a bed or other furniture.

Before this book or this post inspires someone to run off to take the subway alone, bear in mind that abductions may be less likely because parents usually ride with their children on the subway. If every kid rode the subway alone, there might be more abductions.

As for teenagers, many already ride the subway alone and should have the freedom to leave campus during the lunch, use a cellphone at school, and many other fundamental actions unnecessarily restricted by busy-body voters and their politicians.

I can’t wait for the sequel to the book, perhaps it will be called Free Range Teenagers or let’s call it Emancipated Teenagers. Write the first chapter with some elbow grease: launch a campaign to repeal a restrictive local law or school regulation.

Read the Free Range Kids’ author’s book and blog.

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Court approves uniform protest with “Hitler Youth” buttons

Rockstar — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:32:14 +0000

Totalitarian, egalitarian, envious school bureaucrats love uniforms. They force everyone to be equal and suppress free expression. Two students, in the fifth and seventh grades, at schools in Bayonne, New Jersey, protested their schools’ new uniform policies by wearing buttons stating “no school uniforms” with a slash through them along with a photo of Hitler Youth boys wearing identical shirts and neckerchiefs. No swastikas appeared on the buttons. School admins threatened to suspend the students, so their parents sued. Referencing the famous Tinker arm band decision, a judge ruled the protest may continue because it did not disrupt the school.

The parents specifically filed a federal lawsuit stating the district stifled their children’s First Amendment free speech rights. According to Fox News, the parents also sued to repeal the uniform policy.

One of the students had worn a button for more than six weeks before the school protested. The school claimed the buttons promoted Nazi ideology and do not, if you can believe this, constitute free speech. While the lawsuit moved forward, the students did not wear buttons to avoid jeopardizing their education.

“The school cannot prohibit student free speech even where some may find the speech offensive,” said Ed Barocas, legal director of the ACLU’s New Jersey chapter. “The school must show that the free speech is actually going to be disruptive, in order to censor it.”

The parents issued a written statement:

“I’ve gotten overwhelming support from MANY people that tell me that they absolutely agree with what the image depicted, an ominously homogenous group of blindly cooperative children,” the statement said.

“That image showed no swastikas, no weapons, and Hitler himself wasn’t depicted,” she wrote. “The picture makes a profound statement about what can happen when we turn children into ‘uniform’ followers. Our intent was not to offend but to make a bold statement about what we, as an American family believe is an erosion of a simple right, to be individuals, not blind followers. The very basic rights, to wear clothing we choose, and to peacefully protest what we know was the undemocratic stripping of those rights from us as parent and student.”

Wow!

More info:

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10 rules for dealing with the police

Rockstar — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:38:37 +0000

Did you know that if the police ask you to step out of your car, you should close and lock the door after you exit? Same goes for your home, step outside and speak to the police outside your home. A video from Flex Your Rights illustrates this advice and more. For an encounter, the video shows how you should not act, then shows how you should act. If the former, the subject goes to jail. In the latter, he or she proceeds.

This advice might come in handy when dealing with police who use curfews as an excuse to stop teenagers. The police might be more interested in seeing if you are breaking one of the thousands of federal, state, and local laws that bind us like Gulliver. And this video will show you how to keep the officer focused on the curfew.

The Flex Your Rights video acts out the encounters. For real life videos, you must view the videos of Checkpoint USA showing encounters with internal suspicisionless checkpoints. Some of these encounters can last for 30 minutes. Some end with the person proceeding on. Others end with broken windshields, smashed with the batons of internal, gov’t power-hungry officials. Don’t miss the blog as well.

Now don’t take this as legal advice, but most curfew laws have first amendment exceptions, that unfortunately require an explicit political activity, rather than just the freedom to assemble for a rock concert, discussion or any other reason. Theoretically, you could always say you are heading to or coming from a political event. Just have the name of one in mind, and the event could be a political meeting at a local fast food place.

More info:

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Youth rights group sues to repeal Florida curfew

Rockstar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:27:33 +0000

Residents of the warm, year-round climate of Palm Beach, Florida, regularly stay outside during the late evening, unless they happen to be under the age 18. A local curfew law bars those under 18 from being outside past 10 pm weeknights and 11 pm weekends, unless, one is exercising first amendment rights, including the right to peaceably assemble. Confusing, isn’t it? The National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida sued the city to repeal the law they claim contains a First Amendment exception that, in the words of their star attorney, “swallows” the law.

In a letter to the city, the attorney for the Youth Rights Group takes the time to provide a quick, First Amendment lesson to a City Council that is supposed to understand their ultimate charter for existence.

the ordinance contains the following exception, “Attending or

traveling directly to or from an activity that involves the exercise of rights

protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” These

rights include freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.

“The ordinance contains the following exception, ‘Attending or traveling directly to or from an activity that involves the exercise of rights protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.’ These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association. ”These [First Amendment] rights are implicated in any type of activity one can imagine in the downtown area, since minors in the curfew area will engage in speech and seek to associate with whomever they choose.”

The Youth Rights Group posted all legal documents related to the case, providing a helpful guide on how to sue a city council for repeal of a curfew. The documents include letters to the city, court papers, and press releases.

Courts across the country have struck down city curfews for violating the first amendment rights of teenagers. Most city councils respond by passing a new law including a first amendment exception. The laws acknowledge the First Amendment, but the city continues to arrest people for peaceably assembling or speaking (to their friends). This Palm Beach court case represents an important and long-overdue counter attack.

Had the authors of the Constitution used shorter sentences and bullet points, there might not be as much confusion about the amendments. For example, the U.S. federal government and many state governments have used the 18th century wording of the second amendment to remove the right of people to arm themselves against their government by claiming the right to bear arms only applies to members of a state-government militia. The text is as follows, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In an action sure to have English teachers bear arms, legislatures and their courts (separation of powers is a myth) have used the introductory clause, “a well regulated militia,” to nullify the amendment’s main clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Consider this sentence, “A person may play a violin and attend a concert.” This does not mean a person may play a violin only while attending a concert. The “and” in the sentence merely allows the phrase “A person” to modify “play a violin” and “attend a concert.”A person may play a violin and a person may attend a concert.

Local legislatures need another English lesson about the First Amendment. The First Amendment reads,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let’s focus on the last portion: “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This means people have the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. They do not have to do both at the same time. If they did, then a single person would not be able to petition the government in writing–a person would have to assemble first, then petition the government. Similarly, a person does not need to petition the government in order to peaceably assemble. A person may peaceably assemble simply because the person wants to assemble. The First Amendment was written to prevent governments from doing exactly what they are doing to teenagers: imposing martial law and keeping them in their homes.

Fast forwarding two hundred plus years, let’s adopt contemporary vernacular to the First Amendment: people (including teenagers) have the right to stand anywhere on public land at any time. In short, they may peaceably assemble. They don’t need to protest the government. They can talk about movies, music, or anything else on their minds. They can also remain silent and just hang out and enjoy a warm night in Palm Beach.

Take Action! Sue your city over your local curfew law. Find a local lawyer who sued the your city or state government and see if the lawyer will take your case. The Florida activists found an attorney who successfully helped overturn a law barring feeding the homeless in city parks. Try contacting civil liberties law firms such as the Institute for Justice and the ACLU. Lawyers may be more inclined to take the case since they can reference the Florida case documents.

More Info

Florida case documents
Related article and video
National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida
National Youth Right Association

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Libertarian Rock

Drowsy at school? Ask for a later start time.

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Kentucky seeks to raise exodus age from regimentation

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Prom cancelled to avoid lesbian couple

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Court approves uniform protest with “Hitler Youth” buttons

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