Students’ active social participation has had a significant impact on the democratic development of Korean society. It is an exercise of fundamental rights recognized as an essential part of the democratic practice, so it should be encourage in the ...
Students’ active social participation has had a significant impact on the democratic development of Korean society. It is an exercise of fundamental rights recognized as an essential part of the democratic practice, so it should be encourage in the light of the purpose of school education ‘cultivating democratic citizens’. However, in reality, the fundamental rights of students, including freedom of expression, are very limited. Nevertheless, the discussion on the criteria to apply to the student speech cases is insufficient, and the related cases is hard to find. The U. S. Supreme Court has set categorized standards by dealing with many student speech cases. Tinker
standard may limit student expression if it would “materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school”, Fraser standard may apply to the ugly expression, Hazelwood standard may apply to the school-sponsored speech, and Morse standard may apply to illegal drug-promoting speech. These categorizes have showed their limits by contrary lower courts’ rulings on similar cases. Therefore, new universal standard overcoming each category are being discussed. In Korea, the freedom of expression of students is shrinking due to wide illegal surveillance in on-campus and off-campus, disciplinary threat etc. Above all, the rule of restriction on student
speech is that the principle of proportionality should be observed, freedom of expression of student should be the most important thing in school. Because, the student is a subject of discussion that can actively participate in social issues as well as his own problems, the aim of education is to train independent thinking about pluralistic values. In order to effectively respond to infringement on student speech, the strict scrutiny should be apply to student speech cases. Especially, because the content-based and view-pointed regulations may result in a ban on opposing arguments against the mainstream views and will only allow harmless opinion to the government, they should be judged more strictly.