Charles C. Haynes: School censorship undermines what kids learn in civics

  To find out how the First Amendment is supposed to work in public schools, don’t ask school officials. Ask the kids. Strange as it may seem, many students actually believe what they’re taught in civics class about their constitutional rights.

  Consider Raymond Hosier, a seventh-grader in Schenectady, N.Y. He doesn’t buy his school’s argument that his rosary beads are a “gang symbol” that should be banned. For Raymond, they are an expression of faith that he wears in memory of his uncle who died recently (and who taught Raymond to pray the rosary) and in memory of his brother who died wearing that same rosary in 2005.