*Sigh* I remember when things like this mattered to me. It wasn't that long ago I was a public school student. Every little "injustice" made me mad. I wanted my "rights" early, because, why was it fair to force,
me a perfectly intelligent being, to follow the same rules as toddlers, and my "less intelligent" peers. Yes, I thought that way. Yes, I was immature.
Is the world fair? No. Are
some minors capable of enough understanding to make the kinds of decisions that are being stated here intelligently, and logically? Maybe. Does anything change when you hit the magic age of 16/18/21/whatever the age is locally? Not really.
Re, Minor/Students rights:
Again, as others have stated, it seems like you're just pissed off that your parents can control your life. Even aside from the test issue, it sounds as if you're just wanting to be rebellious. Maybe you have reason, maybe you're just being a typical kid. I don't know. I don't know you or your parents, but since your complaint is something like "They're making me pee in a cup." Rather than "They're beating me with a leather belt every night" I'd say they're at least doing a passable job as parents.
You're a minor. This means that society assumes that you're still in training for life. Some things you're allowed to do with little supervision. Want to buy a candy bar? Fine. Want to get a house loan? Good luck. Some things are just assumed to be beyond what you should be considering doing at this point in your life without further training/knowledge/sense of what you're getting into. There are reasons jobs want you to have experience and/or training and/or certifications. To know that you are ready to do things without screwing things up either for yourself or others. The magic age of 18 is intended to give kids a nice buffer zone in which to gain enough experience, so hopefully, once they're considered adults, they'll have the ability to make intelligent, reasoned decisions.
Does it work? Not always, and in my opinion, less than it should. In my opinion we've gone too far in that direction, protecting children way too much, teaching them the wrong things, keeping them from learning other important things. But that's another discussion.
My point: Everyone has to go through the period where they're not completely trusted to make decisions on their own. Several times, in several situations throughout their lives. 18 is the age society has set on this and while this may or may not be the best way to do things, it's the age everyone has to deal with. It's equal. It's fair. There is no discrimination here. You could try to claim ageism, but I doubt it would fly. You will get older, you will grow out of it. Generally ageism is invoked when people are "too old" for something. A situation which is impossible to correct. To correct being "too young" you just have to wait a bit. I was a kid once, I did stupid things. I still did stupid things after I was 18. I still do stupid things today. However, I have done less stupid things with the more experience I gain. I'm just lucky that as a kid, the worst of the stupid things I ever did were forgiven/did not kill me.
Re, School Drug Tests:
Leaving aside the question of whether recreational drugs should be legal or not. And even leaving aside the question of whether they should be legal for minors, which is even less of a grey area. Let's ask what the school is doing and then look at a few other things the school also does.
The school is, as a requirement to participate in completely optional extracurricular activities, requiring permission to give students drug tests.
What kind of drug tests? That's something that hasn't been answered yet, but I'm going to guess either hair or pee tests. Both unobtrusive and safe to collect. You can argue about the embarrassment of having to pee into a cup, but really, it's just pee. Everyone of us deals with it every day and most of us are fine dealing with it in public bathrooms. I'd, as as a school employee, be more offended at having to potentially deal with hundreds or even thousands of samples of pee, especially if this is a new law and this wasn't in the job description. Again, another discussion.
What exactly are the consequences of the result of this drug test? This is fairly important and has not been answered yet! I would suggest further inquiry to school officials asking what exactly would happen upon a positive test. Because the tests seem to only apply to people who participate in extracurriculars though, it would suggest that the consequences would be limited to those. I seriously doubt a positive drug test would cause you to be kicked out of school. Worst I can see is maybe being referred to a counselor, a parent-faculty meeting, and perhaps some kind of anti-drug program, most likely consisting of having to sit through a boring video, speech, anecdote from a prior drug addict and then possibly a short test at the end. This is just conjecture though and really overestimates what the school systems could afford to do. I do highly doubt though that you would be completely kicked out of school or lose all credit for the semester based only on a single drug test. The consequences of catching a kid with drugs/drug paraphernalia on campus are probably going to be much worse than catching them simply using drugs through a test.
Other situations where the schools have similar powers: Schools can enforce that kids be given vaccines. At certain ages, or else they can not attend school, which puts the parents at fault under whatever local laws require kids to be in school to a certain age. Schools can enforce that kids not be allowed at school if they are sick enough and especially if the illness is communicable. Schools have the power (and in many cases the legal responsibility) to report problems they find to higher authorities. (I.E. Police, Child Protective Services, etc.)
As far as the extracurriculars go, if it's school sponsored, schools have the right to limit participation in whatever manner they see fit as long as it isn't discriminatory. Recreational drug use is not a child's right, or inherent quality like religion, race or gender is. Schools already tend to limit participation based on grades and good behavior. (Although not as much as they should, I believe.) Extracurricular activities are more like a reward(or should be, anyway). You're a good child by our standards, go have fun and play. You're not a good child, by whatever standards, so you just need to be home studying more and/or being punished/corrected by your parents.
Is this fair? Maybe, maybe not but in general, I'd hope it to be done in a fair way, and it can be. Is this the right way to do things? Possibly not, but it's the way that is approved of by society at the moment. It might change, but we've all had to deal with things growing up that were less than ideal. We never get a chance to change them for ourselves. The only thing we can do is hope to grow older, and if we still see them as unfair or wrong under the light of experience, then hope to change them for our own children.
Re, Hats and other dress code issues:
There tends to be a complicated, somewhat outdated, and from quick research, seemingly specifically Christian set of rules about hats and their usage. It's a set of customs that were informally enforced at least up until about 40 to 60 years ago pretty strictly. I don't mean to suggest that they should continue in that form, but people do need to understand that there are still people alive that grew up with notion and are in fact insulted by people who don't follow these customs, for whatever reason. Maybe you don't agree with them, but for the same reason most people don't go spouting "curse" words around their grandparents, people should still respect these customs, to the best of their abilities, around the people to whom it matters.
From a more logical standpoint. Some places do have gang problems. Some head coverings(admittedly along with a lot of other clothes) do denote gang membership. It may in fact prevent some problems that might have occurred otherwise.
Hats are also distractions. Whether simply being something different to focus on than a bunch of heads of hair or the teacher, or in fact, being large and blocking a view for someone, it's simply easier to keep kids from wearing hats in general than to try to police which are too distracting and which are too big. I might be willing to suggest, especially in colder climates, that a specific type of hat be allowed. Perhaps a plain black(no design on it whatsoever) properly sized(i.e. tight against the head) stocking style cap be allowed for kids to wear. However, most schools do have proper heat and those that don't have a problem. If you're cold though, I've never had a teacher tell me I couldn't wear a jacket or a sweater in the classroom. (Although during a couple of tests they made me roll up my sleeves and show them my pockets were empty to prevent cheating.) Inside of a sheltered building full of other warm bodies, that'll generally suffice.
As for a few of the other complaints such as "no exposed shoulders." Distractions as well. I was a male teenager, I remember all too clearly the times I wasn't paying attention to class and was instead trying to get a good view of the exposed skin of someone near me. As much as you'd or anyone else would like to argue, exposed skin is a serious distraction to a room full of hormone filled teenagers. You can claim that dress codes/uniforms stifle creativity. And they very well might, however, children tend to have plenty of outlets for creativity. Moreso than most adults even. There is especially though a serious issue that I've seen myself, both as a kid and as an adult in a classroom setting that kids judge each other severely based upon clothing. Especially high end clothing that not everyone can afford. Even to this day I will say that there is no more brutal social situation to be in than as a kid in a middle/junior high school. Anything to try to make it that much easier, even if it means uniforms, which I admit wouldn't fix everything, has my approval.
Anyway, that went on for way too long, and I'm sure I missed some things I wanted to talk about.
If anyone wants me to, I'll spoiler the separate sections to make the whole thing less of a wall of text to scroll past.
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Topic: Student's/Minor's Rights? (USA) (Read 9139 times)