Americans Don't Want Schools To Punish Off-Campus Speech

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the limits of public schools' authority to penalize speech made outside the walls of the country's faltering government-run institutions of occasional learning, polling says most people want to leave kids free to speak their minds. Only one-in-four adults would let schools punish students for their online comments. A damning indictment of public education might be found in the single group to voice majority support for extracurricular censorship: children being taught in those schools.

"Just one-quarter of Americans (25%) believe that public schools should be allowed to punish students for what they say online, outside of school," The Economist/YouGov reported last week of polling results. "About half (52%) say that schools should not be allowed to punish students for this, and 23% are not sure."