Trolls in the Bathroom and other Foreseeable Disruptions

What's most interesting to me about the Harry Potter ban is the justification of avoiding a "substantial disruption," based on the ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, the landmark Vietnam War era case in which students were suspended from school for wearing black arm bands in protest of the Vietnam War and draft. In the original case, the Des Moines area school district defended the Tinker children's suspension based on the contention that their fashion/political choices were disrupting the school environment by making the school a forum for political debate. The majority opinion stated that the school district's regulation was based on an attempt to avoid controversy, and that a school district cannot limit free speech for the sole reason of quashing dissent or protest. Later restrictions in other cases justified bans, suspensions, and other forms of censorship when speech was "indecent" or promoting illegal activity.

The religious justification for banning Harry Potter is weak at best, especially within the current legal system, but the question of the books causing a "disruption" is clouded to say the least. The political implications of the Harry Potter books are pretty scant, but the school board's fears were behavioral. The article we read said that one board member voted for the ban based on the fact that the series depicts students disobeying school rules out of necessity. (Never mind that when this occurs it is usually for the greater good and involves defeating trolls and evil dark wizards.) S/he feared that students would begin to mimic the behavior they read about in the popular fantasy series.

The assumption that a student would justify disobedience with "but there was a troll in the bathroom" shows how completely out of touch these board members were with their own students. Unless they have any untreated schizophrenics, I highly doubt this is going to occur. In fact, it is probably more likely that a student would justify disobedient behavior as a reaction to overly draconian rules or ignorance of the rules themselves.

I've begun to believe that most censorship comes from a place of condescension, especially when it involves young people. When we begin to give children credit for their own ideas and opinions, when we actually ask them what they see in the Harry Potter books, and when parents stop being scared that they'll lose an idealogical argument with their own kids, then we will have fulfilled the promise of John F. Kennedy, the instigator of the war that the Tinker children protested:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

"Sometimes the rules need to be broken" is certainly an alien philosophy, if not an unpleasant fact. And though there are times to limit the First Amendment, if we rob our school children of their ability to dissent, what kind of citizens will we have created?