Freedom Essays - Freedom Of Expression, Freedom Of Religion

Freedom Essays - Freedom Of Expression, Freedom Of Religion Freedom Have you ever wondered what life at school would be like without freedom? In myopinion I think it would be horrid. Think about it. If we had no freedom we wouldnt be able to do the things we love most, or choose what friends we hang out with. The freedoms we have now we all take for granted. For example, do you even know what your freedoms are? If you dont, then you ought to hear me out so you know in the future what they mean. First of all there are two very specific freedoms that all students and teachers should know and understand. These two freedoms are the very basis for our society. 1)FREEDOM OF SPEECH Freedom of speech is one of the most important freedoms we have because if we didnt have this one we wouldnt be able to speak our minds through speeches in public. This freedom allows us to speak in more ways than one. It allows us to express ourselves through reading, writing, and speaking. Although freedom of speech has its greatness in many ways, it also has a downfall, in which it is abused. For example: Media today can twist this freedom to invade your privacy, which is not a good thing if youre Arnold Shwartzenegger getting out of the shower, and someone takes a picture of you naked and prints it in the local paper. But most of the time this sinerio doesnt occur because theyve come up with laws like the Privacy Act, and so on so this sort of mayhem doesnt happen, but even though laws are made people still break them. 2)FREEDOM OF RELIGION This freedom goes along with freedom of speech yet stands alone in its own category. There are many ways to look at this freedom. It has as many goods as it does bads. You just have to learn how to apply it to you. First Ill list the goods. The gains of this freedom allow you not only to speak your own opinions, but allows you to take it a step further. Example: Lets say you are a Christian, but go to a school where Christianity is looked down upon. Now lets say you have some friends that also attend this school and want to have a lunchtime bible study, but are afraid that the school may suspend you or even worse. Well, it says in the constitution, the rules and regulations our country is based upon, that students may have a bible study in and on school premises as long as it is student led. Teachers may even attend, but cannot participate in the function. This is where a lot can go wrong and things get turned upside down. This is also where some of the bads come into play. This free dom is more a rightstricken than abused law. In other words its more denied than abused. An example of this was written by Rebecca Jones from the American Schoolboard Journal. She wrote, Lillian Gobits Vs Minersville District, in 1940 led some West Virginians to punish Jehovahs Witnesses who refuse to have their children recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The Witnesses, she wrote, Were actually herded together and fed castor oil, stripped of their clothes, and forced to walk through town. (Jones 2) Well, about three years later the supreme court reversed itself and ruled that schools could not require the pledge. Its this kind of abuse that turns people away from religion in my opinion. Nothing is more challenging than confronting a well-established myth. A myth, repeated often enough that it takes a hold on peoples imaginations and is all but impossible to get rid of. One such myth is that when it comes to religion in public schools, people For and Against school prayer are engaged in the legal equivalent of Hand-to-hand combat, one side fighting to put God in schools, and the other desperately trying to keep him out. Unfortunately, parents, schools officials, and politicians alike sometimes act as if the myth were fact. Some people ag-on this myth with well-intentioned, but simply wrong statements about what the constitution does and does not permit. House speaker Newt Gingrich, for example, announced a while back that