Some people think that kids should be seen and not heard. Some people think that school is only for learning. But you can learn things outside the classroom, like the meaning of the First Amendment.

Generally, students in public schools have fewer speech rights than everyone else. That's because schools have a particular focus in educating the kids and some speech will disrupt the educational process. Similar limitations on speech apply to the military and prisons. For one kid in Vermont, the school must have felt like the military or prison. His lawsuit in its own way is a landmark student speech case that coincidently dovetails with current events.

The 1960's saw a sea-change in how we saw the world. These changes affected how the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment for schoolchildren. I can imagine the speech restrictions that took place in the public schools prior to 1968. But that year, the Court ruled that a school district in Iowa could not punish a student for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. This was the Tinker case.

The Supreme Court does not rule on student speech rights very often, so a ruling that came down a few weeks ago by the United States Court of Appeals was decided with little concrete guidance from the Supreme Court. It involved a seventh-grader who came to school with an anti-Bush shirt depicting the President as a cocaine-snorting drunk who dodged the draft and became a chicken-hawk. The school told the student to change his short or put duct tape over the drug references, but the Court of Appeals said the shirt was legal and the school cannot censor this political speech.

While schools can censor student speech that's offensive or lewd, these legal standards typically involve vulgarity, obscenity and profanity. The parameters were best summarized by one judge's observation that students can wear Tinker's armband but not Cohen's jacket. The jacket reference was a 1970 Supreme Court ruling that allowed an anti-war guy to walk through a courthouse with a jacket that said "Fuck the Draft." Since speech restrictions are broader at school, Cohen's jacket would be prohibited there. Since the anti-Bush shirt did not articulate a pro-drug or pro-alcohol message, the fact that it was controversial and offensive to some was not enough for school officials to make the student take it off or cover it with duct tape.

The anti-Bush tee shirt case has generated a lot of media coverage. Here's how the Associated Press saw it:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. student who sued school officials after he was made to censor his T-shirt that labelled President George W. Bush "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" and a former alcohol and cocaine abuser won an appeal on Wednesday to wear the T-shirt to school. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour of Zachery Guiles, who through his parents claimed his free speech rights had been violated when school officials made him put duct tape over parts of his T-shirt that showed a Bush image surrounded by cocaine, a razor blade, a straw and a martini.

Guiles, who as a seventh grader in 2004 wore the T-shirt to Williamstown Middle High School in Vermont once a week for two months after purchasing it at an anti-war rally, appealed the case after a lower court ruled in favour of the school.

The school argued the images were offensive because they undermined the school's anti-drug message.

The T-shirt read "George W. Bush" and "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" with a picture of the president's face wearing a helmet superimposed on the body of a chicken.

The back of the T-shirt showed lines of cocaine, a martini glass and smaller print that accused Bush of being a "Crook," "Cocaine Addict," AWOL," "Draft Dodger" and "Lying Drunk Driver."

The appeals court said while the T-shirt "uses harsh rhetoric and imagery to express disagreement with the president's policies and to impugn his character," the images depicted "are not plainly offensive as a matter of law."

"We conclude that defendants' censorship of the images on Guiles's T-shirt violated his free speech rights," the ruling said, noting the T-shirt was censored after only one parent with opposing political views complained.

"Guiles's T-shirt did not cause any disruption or confrontation in the school," the ruling said.

Some may decry the loss of civility in schools when the courts allow an anti-Bush shirt at a time of war. But how often do middle-school students actually voice an opinion about anything important? The controversy would hopefully trigger some kind of teach-in at the school where students could learn about and debate the First Amendment, war and peace and even students' rights. Note to those school administrators: seize the moment!