Guest Opinion: Freedom and security in our schools Guest Opinion: Freedom and security in our schools (September 21, 2005)

By Cory D. Maley

A few weeks ago, Woodside High School Principal Linda Common made an executive decision to temporarily ban the wearing of red and blue clothing by students and staff on campus due to concern about gang activity. This issue brings us to the heart of the contemporary American dilemma: Is it reasonable to trade some freedom for security (or at least a sense of security)?

Benjamin Franklin warned that "people willing to trade their freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both." As one of the school's European history teachers, I am well aware of how readily rights are taken away for the "good of the people," and how difficult they are to win back.

So to have it occur in our little microcosm, even at the benevolent hands of someone I respect and trust, leaves me in an awkward position, at odds with my respective roles as guardian and teacher.

At a fundamental level I agree with Ms. Common: it is imperative that we do what is in our power to safeguard our campus and each of our nearly 1,800 students. At the same time I have just finished extolling the virtue of Socrates for standing up for what he believed was right. It is the central tenet of my entire course: It is important to stand up for what is right against what you perceive as injustice. So I was left with an obvious question, tossed into my lap by one of my fourth-period sophomores: "Mr. Maley, what would you do?"

I answered in the only way I felt I could. "It wouldn't be right for me to say what I would do, because you need to decide for yourself. But I will share a story about a man named Henry David Thoreau." Without turning this into a history lesson, Thoreau launched his own personal campaign of civil disobedience, and his treatise, "On Civil Disobedience," inspired the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez to stand up for what they believed in without resorting to further violence.

It is important that we foster in our youth the notion that they can stand up to what they view as injustice, even if as a teacher or an administrator it may complicate our lives to have good students asserting themselves and fighting for their rights while we try to protect them from those who "be illin.' "

Today it is fashion they're standing up for, but tomorrow it may be the essential freedoms that this country's founders fought so hard to bring to fruition. I don't want to stifle that. As educators, I want to believe we are here to develop leadership, independence of thought, and civil and moral responsibility, not to enforce compliance and induce civic disaffection. We would all lose so much to stamp out a spirit that is vital to maintaining the prime American value: freedom.

Cory D. Maley teaches European history at Woodside High School.

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