Free Speech? Not in Schools

"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of ..." - NOT SO FAST!!!

It's one of the most wonderful times of the year here in Charlottesville, the home of our third president (whom my wife and her fellow Wahoos refer to as "Mr. Jefferson"), as the Thomas Jefferson Center has announced the winners of the 2009 Muzzle Awards.  The awards "honor" the most egregious First Amendment infractions across the country.  This year's recipients range from the corralling of protesters at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions to three high school-related incidents.

The first involves the suspension of a teacher for using Erin Gruwell's The Freedom Writers Diary in her class:

[A]t the beginning of 2008 a 27-year veteran high school teacher in Indianapolis was placed under administrative leave for assigning the book to her at-risk 11th grade students ... because the Perry Meridian High School Board indefinitely delayed granting her permission to teach the book.

Also among the honorees is the Horry County School District in South Carolina, who refused to allow the distribution of an issue of the student newspaper because it contained an editorial advocating same-sex marriage:

Ronnie Burgess, the principal of the Academy for Arts, Science & Technology, was concerned that the front-page article and accompanying photo of two young men holding hands would be disruptive to his student body. He gave the [student newspaper's editors] $500 to reprint 500 copies of the paper without the article, even though they normally financed the newspaper independently through ad sales and not through school support.

Finally, the issue of "disruptive" clothing on school grounds came up in Omaha:

Nearly two-dozen Millard South High School students in Omaha, Nebraska, were suspended last year for wearing t-shirts with the phrase 'R-I-P Julius,' honoring a former classmate who was murdered in May ... school officials thought the shirts violated the dress code that barred 'disruptive' clothing. The ACLU soon got involved, defending the shirts as an expression of the students’ grief, not as a message intent on disrupting learning.

The three cases here seem to hit right at the heart of three major issues that concern how far the First Amendment reaches into our schools, and the latter two come into direct conflict with Tinker v. Des Moines and Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, the two most important Supreme Court cases on record concerning the First Amendment.  The first ... well, that seems more the result of bureaucratic incompetence than anything (seriously ... I wasn't too hip to the movie Freedom Writers, but you're really going to suspend someone who used the book for at-risk students, who are essentially the same students who wrote the "diaries" in the first place?).  The T-shirt case is less puzzling, although I do wonder what it was about the shirts that was so "disruptive" (it's not like there were swastikas on the shirts ... and in some schools in the south, shirts with the Confederate Flag on them aren't considered "disruptive").

The newspaper story hits closer to home, especially since I have taught journalism and been a newspaper adviser.  Now, according to the story, the editors did not get the cover story pre-approved by the administration, so in the realm of Hazelwood they probably don't have a leg to stand on, and the principal could say that he was offering compensation in paying to reprint the issue.

BUT ... wasn't he also trying to buy them off?

I'm not the only person out there who thinks Hazelwood is hindering budding journalists, and this is a prime example.  Unfortunately, I'm not a constitutional lawyer so I have no idea what it would take to overturn this decision.

Because the thing is, it's wrong.  And not just because students need a forum in which to express themselves.  In teaching journalism, I teach that the First Amendment is sacrosanct and journalists should have a sense of professionalism, responsibility, and ethics; the power a principal or other administrator has with the Hazelwood decision is censorship, and what often happens is that advisers, editors, and writers give up before they even try and a student newspaper does become a public relations arm for the school.  Furthermore, with the internet a dominant public forum for so many students, the student newspaper is quickly becoming obsolete and while some papers have gone online in recent years so many are still trying to raise hundreds upon hundreds of dollars each year for printing either becuase the school doesn't have the means to put its newspaper online or is hesitant to create an online student voice under the auspices of "protecting" those students.

In cultivating young minds, we're supposed to be encouraging them to explore and think for themselves.  "As long as it isn't disruptive" doesn't seem to make much sense.

Tom Panarese is currently in his fourth year as an English and journalism teacher and yearbook adviser in Virginia. Prior to a career in education, Tom worked in marketing as a proposal writer for a a variety of companies in technology, telecommunications, and law. Tom's essays have been published in print and on Education Week. He blogs at the often gut-busting The Uninspired Teacher.