Saturday, November 12, 2005

You Have The Right To Remain...Vocal!

We have the privilege of having a great mix of teens in our Youth Group. Some go to local public schools, some to a local Christian School. They each bring unique experiences and opportunities to our group.

More than a few times I've heard from the teens in our group that go to public schools about subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) instances of school officials instructing students to refrain from certain religious expressions. For example, a student was actually instructed that she is not allowed to bring a Bible to school. Hopefully the teaching giving these instructions was simply misinformed about the law in this area. I think that is probably the case in many instances. However, the reason is really not relevant. The bottom line is that students cannot rely on the school officials to protect their rights in this area.

The only way for you to know your free speech and expression of religion rights in your school is to check into it for yourself. You can find a helpful article here. Take a look and see if your rights are being infringed upon. Contrary to what you might be hearing from your school, you have the right to remain vocal!

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