More than 35 years ago the United States Supreme Court wrote, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech … at the schoolhouse gates,” in its landmark decision that students and teachers have the right to free expression on school grounds (Tinker v. Des Moines, 1969).

The writer of Sunday’s letter on student newspapers, in his attack on House Bill 1307, suggests that such freedom should be limited. If he were a true conservative, he would, in fact, support the Constitution and the fact that we don’t take rights away from people just because they are young.

One does not have to earn rights – but one can lose them through court action for just cause.

More than 55 years ago I was a sports editor for the Everett High School Kodak. I can assure readers that we were a responsible group of kids who may have made errors from time to time, but learned from those errors. To have locked us into simple rote routines would have trained us to work for a dictatorship, not for a democracy.

I spent 40 years in public education as a teacher, counselor and administrator – much of it in California where the law prohibits administrative censorship of student publications. At times it was discomforting for administrators (and, sometimes, students) but discomfort was a small price to pay for open, free discussion.

To suggest that today’s students have nothing to teach each other is to underestimate the value of peer learning. Students help other students through tutoring, insightful discussions and by just studying together.

Students are not empty vessels that are to be filled from the top in isolation from everyone else. It is the interchange that makes for a productive society.

Dan Nsman

Port Townsend