Pledge wouldn't be the only time schools impose values (D.J. TICE, 3/20/02, Pioneer Press)

Just two months ago, a federal judge issued a final ruling that Woodbury High School violated a student's free speech rights last year. School officials had prohibited a conservative Christian pupil from wearing a "Straight Pride" sweatshirt. The shirt expressed the student's dissent from what he and his parents considered the school's promotion of a "homosexual agenda."

Also in January of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a case from Faribault, Minn., letting stand the school district's decision to restrict what a science instructor can teach. Schools officials had denied a religious Faribault biology teacher permission to explore in class his disbelief in the theory of evolution.

These well-publicized cases illustrate that issues of free expression become a bit complicated in public schools. The Faribault case shows that schools have broad powers to decree what students shall be taught. The Woodbury case shows that schools cannot deny students' individual rights to dispute what they are taught.

But there's one thing neither of these cases suggests. Neither suggests that our schools are particularly shy about pushing some ideas and discouraging others, even when doing so collides with deeply held beliefs of some students and teachers.

Schools exist to teach values. The real argument isn't over whether they should, but over which values they should be teaching. I'm thinking good citizenship and patriotism should be the minimum we expect of them.