Ensuring civil
behavior in New Jersey's schools
EDITORIALS, Home News
Tribune Online, February 26, 2007
New Jersey, which is already among
the most progressive states when it comes to protecting people from harassment,
took further steps toward shielding some of its most vulnerable citizens
Wednesday when the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a law that
requires businesses to protect their employees from workplace harassment based
on sexual orientation requires schools to do the same.
Childhood bullying, particularly toward children perceived as gay, is often
unendurable. In the case before the court, the boy in question endured
years of bullying from elementary school onward. Even though the school
district tried to punish some of his harassers, the bullying continued until the
boy transferred to a private school. The court made no ruling as to
whether the public school district — Toms River — was liable for those years of
bullying, but it did rule that schools need to do more than punish identified
perpetrators; they need to ensure that the system as a whole is free from abuse.
At the same time, an attorney for the Toms River school district said he thought
the court's ruling also recognized the differences between a school and a
workplace. Obviously, school districts must educate as well as discipline.
And firing, i.e., suspension or dismissal, is a last resort. Their job is
in some respects more difficult and less easily resolved.
But the court is right to understand not only that a child needs to feel
protected by school administrators, and safe in the school he or she attends,
but that the school is the perfect place to teach all students the values of
tolerant behavior.
The order is tall, but the benefit to bullied students and the society at large
could be substantial.
.oOo.
A clearer, kinder constitution
EDITORIALS, Home News
Tribune Online, February 26, 2007
Sticks and stones may break bones,
but it isn't true, no matter what your mother said, that words will never hurt.
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on harassment recognizes that. So does
a unanimous state Senate vote on Friday that would ask the public to rephrase
the portion of the state constitution that bars some from voting. The
constitution says "no idiot or insane person" may cast a ballot. The
Senate would keep the meaning but change the wording. It would bar those
deemed by a judge "to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting."
Besides being clearer, the new phrasing is less judgmental, which seems a good
thing. Some may call it political correctness, but it's worth remembering
that the original phrasing was conceived in the day when "idiot" and "insane"
were medical terms, not common schoolyard taunts.
Certainly a state's constitutional language ought to be as progressive as the
laws it embraces.
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