The Nurseries of Democracy: A "Holistic Analysis" of Young Students' First Amendment Rights (Poster 18)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 11:45 am
  In Invited Poster Session: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work Poster Session

Abstract

This project examines how the First Amendment applies to young children in public elementary schools. Using an expanded “holistic analysis” (Warnick & Thomas, 2023), it shows how courts, policies, and school practices shape children’s civic development in ways that often underestimate their capacity and narrow their rights. By placing legal discourse, educational theory, and leadership practice in conversation, the project exposes how power operates through assumptions about age, capacity, and “appropriate” expression; assumptions that often reproduce broader racial, socioeconomic, and political inequalities in schools and obscure the civic aims of public education.

Author

• Christopher D. Thomas, University of Florida