Word: tinkering
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...surprising, then, that the man picked in June to replace Brown - a dependable, gaffe-free Scot - as Chancellor signaled little in the way of change. But if Alistair Darling (no less dependable, gaffe-free, or Scottish) is unlikely to tinker too much with the Treasury, both men must be hoping the British economy remains just as reliable. And, right now, there's cause for concern. Rising gas prices kept inflation at 2.4% in June, above the government target of 2% and the E.U. average of 2.1%. Desperate to keep a lid on prices, the Bank of England pushed up interest...
...banner was a joke, a prank that embarrassed the school and cost Frederick a few days of forced vacation. It did not raise politically weighty issues like drug policy or whether students should wear black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War, the issue in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the 1969 case establishing students' right to free speech. And making a Supreme Court case out of it was all but frivolous, a move emblematic of how students and their parents are rushing to court to vent their smallest grievances with schools...
...authority a righteous cause in schools as well as on the streets. But students also attracted attention from public-interest lawyers who believed that stronger rights of expression would allow children to get a better education. Their first big victory came in 1969 with the black-armband case, called Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that students don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech ... at the schoolhouse gate" as long as they don't cause "substantial disruption" at school. Courts gave students even more rights...
Money isn't the half of it. Arum's research indicates that cases like Tinker encourage students and teachers to believe that kids have far more legal rights than they actually do. Possibly as a result, 82% of public school teachers and 77% of principals practice "defensive teaching" like ignoring misbehavior so they can avoid lawsuits, according to a 2004 Harris poll. "What these cases do," says Negrón , "is have a chilling effect on [the ability of] administrators and teachers to make the decisions they need to make...
Frederick sued the school for violation of his free-speech rights and won in the lower federal courts. But the Supreme Court accepted the school's appeal and is expected to rule on the case before July. It is the most significant high-court case since Tinker to test a school's authority to suppress student dissent, but that may be where the similarities end. "Tinker was all about explicitly political topics, and the courts were sympathetic about protecting students' fundamental political rights," says Arum. "It's quite different when you're talking about bong hits." Or, for that matter...