THE FOURTH 'R'

...This is a bill which recognizes the rights of teen-agers in the high schools to say that if any group is allowed to meet, then all groups—so long as they do not break either the laws or the furniture—should be allowed to meet in the school buildings...

...The Court, by an 8-to-l vote, found that since the University of Missouri at Kansas City allowed other voluntary student groups to meet, it had established "a First Amendment forum" and therefore must also permit a club composed of evangelical Christians to use facilities on campus...

...Once they grasp what the Bill of Rights is all about, teen-agers get quite excited...

...Accepting this theory, most courts have ruled against student-initiated religious speech in high schools, and many civil libertarians applaud those courts...

...The presence of a diversity of religious and political groups—before and after school hours—can't help but stimulate students to think for themselves...

...Schools must play an essential role in preparing their students to think and analyze and to recognize the demagogue...

...Another opponent, Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, said, "I do not understand why anyone would want to force our schools to give bizarre cults access to our teen-agers...

...Under any definition, this is Government sponsorship of religion...

...He was turned down on the basis of a state board of education rule that "public schools may not be used for the religious socialization of students" and, accordingly, must not allow the distribution of Bibles or religious tracts...

...Two years ago, for example, a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the state of Washington threatened to sue a public school district because a high school was about to stage the rock opera, Jesus Christ, Superstar...

...Nat Hentoff writes each month about music and occasionally about First Amendment issues...

...It didn't support the bill because of its fears that the student religious clubs may turn into recruitment agencies...

...This means, for instance, that a nuclear freeze club—formerly banned at some schools for being too "political"—now has the right to meet...

...One can easily imagine the pressure students will feel (or exert) to join (or involve) friends in their religious club, disregarding their own religious beliefs...

...to religious goals,' than it is 'now committed to the goals of Students for a Democratic Society, the Young Socialist Alliance, or any other group eligible to use its facilities.' " But—and this is the caveat that lower courts tend to underline in high school religious speech cases—the Supreme Court added: "University students are, of course, young adults...

...Seymour Reich, head of the National Civil Rights Committee of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, argued that "peer influence and conformity are strongest during the high school years...

...He pointed out that when the school authorities tried to impose a prior restraint on him, "they broke the First Amendment three times—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion...

...The lower-court decisions usually point to the Supreme Court's ruling in a case concerning equal access to student religious speech in a public university (Wid-mar v. Vincent, 1981...

...This will mark the first time in our history," said Representative Don Edwards of California, the most impassioned defender of the Bill of Rights in the House, "in which Federal law will license and encourage religious services in our schools...

...After all, said the Court, "an open forum in a public university does not confer any imprimatur of state approval on religious sects or practices...

...With the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and other pied pipers in mind, the Equal Access law also warns that "non-school persons may not direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend activities of student groups...

...I think those of us who think teen-agers ought to be treated with some respect for their individuality ought to welcome this bill...

...On the other hand, however, civil libertarians and almost all courts have agreed since the Tinker decision of 1969 that students are intellectually and emotionally mature enough to run their own newspapers without school interference, unless the principal can prove that the students have printed material that is legally defamatory, obscene, or likely to cause a riot...

...In every school I've worked in, from Boulder to Brooklyn, I have seen more disinclination toward conformity among students than among many of the adults I know...

...For their intellectual and emotional well-being, they need to be exposed to all ideas, including those that speak of and for religion...

...Even the ACLU, whose national board generally regards any religious speech in school as gnawing away at the Bill of Rights, found some good in the Equal Access measure...

...The degree to which high school students are capable of independent inquiry can be ascertained from "The Constitutional Dimensions of Student-Initiated Religious Activity in Public High Schools," an article in The Yale Law Journal, which points out that civil libertarians embrace a contradiction if they believe that high school kids aren't intellectually or emotionally mature enough to resist religious temptation, even if the source of that temptation is other students and not the school...

...That is the basic contradiction many civil libertarians try to ignore...

...As the court of appeals quite aptly states, such a policy 'would no more commit the University...

...A case currently in the Federal courts underscores the fear that many school boards and principals have of letting a wisp of religion slip into their schools...

...It would be of real benefit to many political and other student groups which seek ACLU assistance...

...In the light and heat of free-speech wars, the cults can be expected to wither away...

...an empowering of teen-agers so that the school boards and the school authorities can no longer pick and choose for these teen-agers...

...Now the process of conversion takes place under insulated, carefully controlled conditions...

...The distinction is the difference between upholding the First Amendment and violating it...

...It is noncoercive...

...They get excited because they are able to stretch their polemical skills in arguing with their peers about privacy, free press and speech, and the separation of church and state...

...Showing that vivid work, said the ACLU chapter, is an act of "religious instruction" that "has no place in a public school...

...The Minnesota chapter is supporting the young man...

...At that point, we will find out whether the Supreme Court—most of whose Justices have not seen a high school student for decades—still believes that "younger students" can't tell the difference between official nurturing of religion and official neutrality toward religion...

...Much of the opposition to Equal Access came from those who do not believe teen-agers are individuals yet—at least not to the degree that they can withstand peer pressure...

...Indeed, Mr...

...So do most high school principals and many teachers...

...No wonder various cults have been successful in scooping up young people with little practice in critical thinking...

...Opponents of the bill charged that Equal Access was "an unconstitutional attempt to put prayer back into the public schools," and that members of minority faiths would be coerced into religious exercises...

...Opponents of religious activity argue that a student won't understand that the school is not endorsing a religious club by allowing it to meet...

...I spend a fair amount of time with high school students when I am invited by teachers or by students who have read my history of the First Amendment or various articles I've written on censorship and the like...

...Those who believe religion has an "insinuating" influence on the young— whether initiated by students or not—don't recognize the distinction between what students can do and what the state cannot do...

...A tumultuous case in point is the Federal Equal Access bill that was passed and signed into law last summer...

...In this instance, the ACLU affiliate did not flinch at the word "religion...

...The bill was initially introduced to open public schools to student religious clubs, but when that didn't pass muster in Congress, a compromise was reached to prohibit discrimination—in the words of the statute—"against any students who wish to conduct a meeting...

...It is...

...I think that is in error," he explained on the House floor...

...But that is precisely the point...

...In any case, the Equal Access bill, which does trust students to think for themselves, was signed by the President on August 11...

...Most of this material is new to them because our liberties are so ineptly taught in the schools...

...And that explains why one of the pervasive criticisms of American education in recent years has been the charge that students have not learned how to think—how to analyze what they've ingested...

...Under the statute, any public school receiving Federal funds that allows voluntary student groups to meet before or after regular school hours must also permit religious clubs to assemble...

...But the ACLU didn't oppose the bill, either: "The statute is a serious student rights initiative," said Barry Lynn of the Washington, D.C., office...

...Presumably, that ACLU chapter would also ban Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme for fear that those works might turn students on to some god or other...

...A case resulting from the Equal Access statute is almost certain to reach the Supreme Court because one lower court or another is likely to strike down the law...

...All clubs must be student-initiated, without a trace of sponsorship by the school or by any teacher...

...Not only does the First Amendment forbid prayer in the classroom or auditorium, they say, but any form of religious speech is so dangerous to impressionable students that the schoolhouse door must be barred to all such speech...

...on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings...

...The authorities suspended him...

...The Minnesota student decided to engage in civil disobedience on First Amendment grounds, and he distributed the paper...

...Of course, some cults will try to proselytize, but they will then run into counter-arguments from other students who have become accustomed to intellectual dispute on these matters...

...As Barney Frank says, many adults, including liberals and civil libertarians, do tend to infantilize teen-agers...

...If, in their school papers, teen-agers have the maturity to handle such complicated issues as birth control, draft registration, and national politics, then why can't they also be trusted to tell the difference between school sponsorship of religion and school accommodation of student-initiated religious speech...

...I do not see any damage that comes to the fabric of this society from the fact that some teen-agers might decide to have a meeting of a radical political group while others might decide to have a meeting of a particular religious society...

...I think that the coercive aspect of school prayers led by teachers is wrong, undercuts fundamental freedoms, and ought not to be allowed, but wholly voluntary activities where outsiders can be prevented from coming in, as under this bill, after school, initiated by students themselves, whether for religious, political, or philosophical purposes, seems to me legitimate...

...Speaker, I regard this as a very auspicious day in many ways in regard to those of us who think we ought not to infantilize teen-agers...

...Students do not need to be protected from ideas...

...They can no longer say, 'If you have a meeting of this club, you can't have a meeting of that one.' The presence of a diversity of religious and political groups— before and after school hours— can't help but stimulate students to think for themselves "It is a piece of legislation which says that if we are going to allow access to the schools for the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats, then all political opinions are going to be let in...

...The facts vary in each case, but the majority of the judges have felt that allowing even voluntary student religious groups to meet in public schools violates the clause of the First Amendment that prohibits government establishment of religion...

...Furthermore, the legislation requires that all student clubs, including religious ones, be subject to the school's authority to maintain order and to make sure that "attendance of students at meetings is voluntary...

...Groups fiercely devoted to separation of church and state fought the bill, however, until the very moment of the final vote...

...They are less impressionable than younger students and should be able to appreciate that the University policy is one of neutrality to religion...

...One of the dissenting judges in a student religious speech case supported the teen-agers' position by quoting from a 1972 New York decision affirming a teacher's right to wear an armband in class to protest the war in Vietnam: "It would be foolhardy to shield our children from political debate and issues until the eve of their first venture into the voting booth...

...Yet a staunch civil libertarian, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, voted for Equal Access, and his reasons for doing so are worth repeating: "There are friends of mine whom I respect greatly who say that somehow we ought never to allow religious-oriented activities to take place on public property, particularly with regard to schools...

...And in an editorial, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune gave the principal and the school board a much-needed refresher course in the First Amendment: "The First Amendment limits what public schools can do on matters of religion, not what students can do—at least within the bounds of nondisruptive behavior...

...In Minnesota, a high school senior asked permission to distribute a religious newspaper in school...

...But this legislative remedy will have problems in the courts, for it is in conflict with a growing number of state and Federal judicial decisions...

...And to maintain order, a school can decide that certain "non-school persons" can't come in...

...The concept of the school neutrally accommodating a voluntary student religious club is supposedly too subtle for immature teen-agers...