We have raised & are now raising-generations of children who are completely ignorant of their rights

[frazzled]

2. You romanticize the past in terms of children

When I was a kid, growing up in the 1950s and 60s, girls were not allowed to wear "slacks" (or any kind of pants to school). Honestly, if you were a girl you had to wear a skirt, except one day a year when you were given the privilege of coming to school in something comfortable. And I grew up where it was cold all winter. So I kind of have to laugh when people are shocked that a kid isn't allowed to wear a neo-Nazi or anti-(name politician) T-shirt to school, or gang colors.

You could be taken to the principal and sent home for chewing gum in my (public) school. Not caught with drugs or even cigarettes, mind you, but gum.

We couldn't vote at age 18. That law wasn't changed until the 26th Amendment was adopted in 1971. I was already 21 and had been unable to express my political opinions.

I don't know what kind of rights of expression you are talking about being circumscribed. But let me give my opinion that kids today have a lot more freedom of expression than we ever did. And that schools have an obligation to educate without distractions; they're not democracies. If we're looking for total freedom for school children, we're looking at potential anarchy.