7. Dissent

While the record does not show that any of the protesting students used profanity or were violent in any matter, there were comments made to them about their protest. Students were threatened for wearing the armbands, and students were threatened for not participating in the protest. A math teacher claimed that Mary Beth Tinker’s wearing of her armband practically wrecked his class. He had continuous arguments with her about the armband and his lesson was not taught the way he would have liked. These armbands did divert students’ minds from their regular lessons, making the armband protest become exactly what elected school officials and principals thought they would. The armbands took the students minds off their class work and got them thinking about the Vietnam War. Teachers are hired to teach and students attend school to learn, not to promote or protest political activity that goes on within our country.
Even though the Supreme Court sided with Tinker it was not unanimous, it was a 7-2 ruling.


MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting:

“Assuming that the Court is correct in holding that the conduct of wearing armbands for the purpose of conveying political ideas is protected by the First Amendment, cf., e.g., Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490 (1949), the crucial remaining questions are whether students and teachers may use the schools at their whim as a platform for the exercise of free speech--"symbolic" or "pure"--and whether the courts will allocate to themselves the function of deciding how the pupils' school day will be spent. While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases. This Court has already rejected such a notion. In Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 554 (1965), for example, the Court clearly stated that the rights of free speech and assembly "do not mean that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express may address a group at any public place and at any time."
(http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/tinker.html)

“In my view, teachers in state-controlled public schools are hired to teach there. Although Mr. Justice McReynolds may have intimated to the contrary in Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, certainly a teacher is not paid to go into school and teach subjects the State does not hire him to teach as a part of its selected curriculum. Nor are public school students sent to the schools at public expense to broadcast political or any other views to educate and inform the public. The original idea of schools, which I do not believe is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date, was that children had not yet reached the point of experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders. It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that "children are to be seen not heard," but one may, I hope, be permitted to harbor the thought that taxpayers send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.”
(http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/tinker.html)

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting:

“I certainly agree that state public school authorities in the discharge of their responsibilities are not wholly exempt from the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment respecting the freedoms of expression and association. At the same time I am reluctant to believe that there is any disagreement between the majority and myself on the proposition that school officials should be accorded the widest authority in maintaining discipline and good order in their institutions. To translate that proposition into a workable constitutional rule, I would, in cases like this, cast upon those complaining the burden of showing that a particular school measure was motivated by other than legitimate school concerns--for example, a desire to prohibit the expression of an unpopular point of view, while permitting expression of the dominant opinion.”
(http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/tinker.html)