Ohio student shot at school gets detention for participating in national school walkout then told..

[Ms. Toad]

43. I don't believe he is suggesting the punishment should not apply

the point of all of the articles I read was the suggestion that he needed to apologize, which (to the extent it is part of the punishment) is a violation of his first amendment rights. The right to free speech also includes the right to be free from compelled speech.

I say that as someone who engaged in civil disobedience at his age. It was in connection with a requirement that - in addition to dissecting a "pickled" frog (which I did), each group of four students was requires to capture, pith, then dissect a live frog for the purpose of seeing its heart beat. I suggested numerous possibilities I was willing to participate in as a reasonable balance between animal cruelty and the wasteful destruction of life and any potential benefit I might gain as a 9th grade student (watching a video of the process, or watching the teacher (or another student) perform the exercise for the entire class (one frog, rather than 8).

I was prepared to (and did) accept the punishment (lowering my grade in the class a full letter grade - which the teacher threatened to call my bluff, then was forced to carry through with once she finally realized it was not a bluff. That punishment almost certainly kept me from being valedictorian - the top 4 students were hundredths of points apart at graduation.

But, had I been required to apologize to the teacher involved, I would have invoked my first amendment rights and there would almost certainly have been a court case.

(And, as an illustration of the value of disobeying the rules you believe are immoral (not stupid) and being willing to accept the consequences, that teacher spent more time thinking about whether the exercise is appropriate than she ever had previously - and has both thanked and apologized to me since then.)