FOCUS QUESTIONS

1. What are your legal rights and responsibilities as a teacher?
2. What legal rights do students enjoy (and do they have legal responsibilities)?
3. What are the ethical responsibilities of teachers and students?
4. What are today’s main approaches to moral education?

CHAPTER PREVIEW

• An honors student sues the school district after being randomly stripsearched.
• A teacher is reprimanded for allowing a first-grader to read a Bible story to the class.
• A teacher is suspended for texting a student.
• A student complains that peer grading of assignments is a violation of privacy.
• A homosexual teacher sues a school district for discrimination.

Today, lawyers and judges are increasingly a part of school life. In this chapter, you will have the opportunity to respond to actual legal situations that have confronted teachers and students. (Get ready to determine your RQ—Rights Quotient.) Also included are some pragmatic steps for your legal self-defense, steps that you can take to avoid potential problems. But, beyond the nitty-gritty of these legal case studies, we will ask more penetrating questions about right and wrong, questions that go beyond the law, such as: How should teachers deal with ethical issues that emerge in the classroom? Should teachers take positions on moral issues? Or should they play a more neutral role? To handle these important but difficult ethical dilemmas, we will offer some suggestions for ways teachers can organize their classrooms, and themselves.