Dissenting Students in Government Schools

Do dissenting  students have a right to object to any ideas that are imposed upon them in the course of 13 years of public schooling? What of the conservative student who objects to the constant school-sponsored support for environmentalism, and multiculturalism, and (recently) Critical Race Theory?

As Justice Kennedy put it so clearly in Lee v. Weisman: “To endure the speech of false ideas or offensive content and then to counter it is part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society, a society which insists upon open discourse towards the end of a tolerant citizenry. And tolerance presupposes some mutuality of obligation....Against this background, students may consider it an odd measure of justice to be subjected during the course of their educations to ideas deemed offensive and irreligious, but to be denied a brief formal prayer ceremony that the school offers in return. This argument cannot prevail, however...” [because of the Establishment Clause]

So, heckler's vetoes are bad and forbidden....except when they are good and required! Is this a little like heads the secular kids win, tails the religious kids lose? Does this double standard endorse a message of disapproval for religion?